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CONTENTS 


eS  ecivonp - - ~ ~ . a 
IT Earty YEARS - - ~ - - I 
If THe Mrppie Years - - - 36 
III Last Years - ~ ~ : - 60 
ITV Work AND INFLUENCE~ - - - 88 


INDEX - - - - - - 95 


LIST OF PLATES 


IN COLOUR 

THE CENOTAPH we ee Or 
THE CORNFIELD, OR COUNTRY LANE - Frontispiece 

PAGE 
FLATFORD MILL, ON THE RIVER STOUR - ss 
THE Hay-waINn - - - - ~ ey) 
HAMPSTEAD HEATH - - : ~ om, Noe ea 
THE VALLEY FARM - - - - ~ - 45 
SALISBURY CATHEDRAL - ~ - - - 55 
BOAT-BUILDING, NEAR FLATFORD MILL - 65 


TREES NEAR HAMPSTEAD CHURCH ~ - - 83 


FOREWORD 


| inte in many respects, John Constable was at 


least singularly fortunate in his biographer, his friend 

C. R. Leslie, himself a painter of some modest merit. 
Leslie’s ‘‘ Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, R.A.,”’ first 
published in 1843, has deservedly become a classic and to this 
admirable work we are all of us indebted for most of what is 
known concerning the life of the painter. With the excellent 
good sense that distinguished him, Leslie, by generous quota- 
tions from the artist’s letters, left Constable to a great extent 
to tell his own story, and his example is one that lesser mortals 
- cannot fail to do wisely in following. 

In this attempt, then, to give a brief outline of the life history 
of one of the greatest painters England ever produced, the 
present writer wishes to acknowledge his overwhelming in- 
debtedness to the fascinating human document which was 
compiled by Leslie’s industry, enthusiasm, and good taste. 
Since it was published, numbers of other books upon Constable 
have appeared, notably Lord Windsor’s ‘‘John Constable, R.A.,”’ 
and ‘‘Constable and his Influence on Landscape Painting,” 
by C. J. Holmes; many of these have been consulted by the 
writer, and will be found acknowledged in the text, but Leslie’s 
‘‘ Memoirs’ remains now, as when first printed, the chief 
authority. Readers who are not yet acquainted with the book 
may like to know that a handy edition has been included in 
Messrs. Dent’s ‘“‘ Everyman’s Library,” and this edition has 
the further attraction of containing a scholarly introduction by 
Sir Charles J. Holmes, Director of the National Gallery. 

F.R. 


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JOHN CONSTABLE 


CHAPTER I 


EARLY YEARS 


the 11th of June, 1776, at East Bergholt, in Suffolk. He 

was the second son of Golding Constable, who was the 
grandson of a Yorkshire farmer who had moved from the 
north of England to the borders of Essex and Suffolk. Golding 
Constable had inherited a considerable property from an uncle, 
and, in addition to having two windmills at East Bergholt— 
where he made his home after his marriage in 1774 to Miss 
Ann Watts—he also owned a water-mill at Flatford and another 
at Dedham. His wife also had some money of her own, so that 
the parents of the artist, if not rich, were at least comfortably 
circumstanced. The marriage was eminently a happy one, and 
Mr. and Mrs. Golding Constable had three sons and three 
daughters. 

John Constable, after appearing to be a weakly infant, grew 
into a strong and healthy child. At the age of seven he was put 
in a boarding school about fifteen miles from Bergholt, then he 
was moved to a school at Lavenham, which was ill-conducted 
by a love-sick headmaster and a bullying usher, and finally he 
was sent to the grammar school at Dedham where he became 


a favourite with the headmaster, the Rev. Dr. Grimwood. It 
I 


Je CONSTABLE, the landscape painter, was born on 


2 JOHN CONSTABLE 


was the personality and character of the boy which won the 
regard of the master rather than any disposition for scholarship. 
Penmanship, we are told, was the one thing in which young 
John excelled, and he acquired some knowledge of Latin and a 
smattering of French, but already when he was sixteen he had 
become devoted to painting, and had formed a curious friend- 
ship with a plumber and glazier, one John Dunthorne, who 
lived in a little cottage near Mr. Constable’s house and devoted 
all his leisure to painting landscapes from Nature. John Con- 
stable’s first attempts at painting were made in the company of 
his friend Dunthorne in the open air and in the cottage. He 
had no studio in his home, but later on he hired a room in the 
village. 

The father does not seem td have disapproved of his son’s 
intimacy with this plumber-artist, but at that time he was 
decidedly unwilling that his son should become a professional 
artist. His parents had hoped that John might become a 
clergyman, but when it became clear that he had no vocation 
for this calling and was disinclined to make the necessary 
studies, it was decided to make him a miller. For about a year, 
therefore, John Constable was employed in his father’s mills, 
and he is said to have performed his duties carefully and well. 
To look out for changes of the sky is one of the most important 
duties of a wind-miller, and with what searching scrutiny and 
loving care young Constable watched the heavens is revealed 
in his own comment on an early sketch, “Spring,” afterwards 
engraved, of one of the mills in which he used to work. 

“It may perhaps,”’ wrote Constable, “‘give some idea of one 
of those bright and silvery days in the spring, when at noon 


EARLY YEARS 3 


large garish clouds surcharged with hail or sleet sweep with 
their broad shadows the fields, woods, and hills, and by their 
depths enhance the value of the vivid greens and yellows so 
peculiar to the season. The natural history, if the expression 
may be used, of the skies, which are so particularly marked in 
the hail squalls at this time of the year, is this: The clouds 
accumulate in very large masses, and from their loftiness seem 
to move but slowly: immediately upon these large clouds appear 
numerous opaque patches, which are only small clouds passing 
rapidly before them, and consisting of isolated portions detached 
probably from the larger cloud. These floating much nearer 
the earth may perhaps fall in with a stronger current of wind, 
which, as well as their comparative lightness, causes them to 
move with greater rapidity, hence they are called by wind- 
millers and sailors, messengers, and always portend bad weather. 
They float midway in what may be termed the lanes of the 
clouds; and from being so situated, are almost uniformly in 
shadow, receiving a reflected light only, from the clear blue 
sky immediately above them. In passing over the bright parts 
of the clouds they appear as darks, but in passing over the 
shadowed parts they assume a grey, a pale, or a lurid hue.” 
No moment of the time spent by the young wind-miller in 
watching the sky was wasted, and the knowledge of clouds and 
weather which he thus acquired in his youth was afterwards of 
incalculable value to him as an artist. John Constable was now 
between eighteen and nineteen, and the turning point in his 
life was at hand. At Dedham resided the Dowager Lady 
Beaumont, mother of Sir George Beaumont, the famous amateur 
and collector, the friend of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and the pupil 


4 JOHN CONSTABLE 


of Richard Wilson. Sir George frequently visited his mother 
at Dedham, and Mrs. Constable, sympathizing with John’s 
artistic yearnings, obtained for her son an introduction to the 
great connoisseur. Sir George was kind and encouraging to 
the young miller. He praised some pen-and-ink copies of 
engravings after Raphael’s cartoons which Constable had made, 
he showed him his favourite picture by Claude—**The Annun- 
ciation,’ now in the National Gallery—and also lent him some 
of Girtin’s water-colours, which he advised him to study as 
‘examples of great breadth and truth.’ These pictures by 
Claude and Girtin were the first considerable works of art 
which Constable had seen, and he always regarded his first 
sight of them as an important epoch in his life. 

Owing largely to the good opinion and influence of Sir 
‘George Beaumont, Constable was permitted in 1875 to go to 
London with a view to ascertaining there his chances of success 
as a painter. He was furnished with an introduction to Joseph 
Farington, R.A., now more famous as a diarist than as a painter, 
but then an artist of great influence in London who was spoken 
of as “‘the Dictator of the Royal Academy.”’ Farington received 
Constable kindly, gave him considerable encouragement, and 
at an early date predicted that his style of landscape would 
eventually “form a distinct feature in the art.” It is not true that 
Constable ever became Farington’s pupil, as some have supposed, 
but he, no doubt, received many valuable hints from him, and 
particularly information regarding the practice of Richard Wilson, 
under whom Farington had studied. From Farington’s “Diary” 
itis clear that acordiality existed between himand Constable from 
their very first meeting, and it is noticeable how plainly even 


EARLY YEARS 5 





the formal phrases of the “‘Diary” convey a suggestion that 
while a call from Turner was merely a duty endured, a call 
from Constable was always a pleasure enjoyed. 

While in London, Constable made the acquaintance of John 
Thomas Smith, a draughtsman and engraver, who subsequently 
became Keeper of Prints at the British Museum, but is best 
remembered now as author of a “Life of Nollekens.”’ Smith not 
only taught Constable something of the processes of etching, 
but also gave him some excellent advice, notably warning him 
not to invent figures for a landscape from his fancy :— 

“You cannot remain an hour in any spot, however solitary, 
without the appearance of some living thing that will, in all 
probability accord better with the scene and time of day than 
will any invention of your own.” 

This advice was treasured and faithfully adhered to with the 
result that the figures in Constable’s landscapes invariably 
appear natural and appropriate, such as he might have seen, 
and probably did see on the spot. For the next two years 
Constable divided his time between London and Bergholt, 
keeping up a correspondence with Smith when he was in the 
country, and these letters, preserved in Leslie’s ““Memoirs of 
~ the Life of John Constable,” are our chief source of information 
as to the artist’s occupations during this period. Smith at this 
time was publishing a series of etchings of picturesque cottages, 
and some of Constable’s letters to him contained sketches of 
cottages. Probably these sketches were as good as anything 
Constable was doing at the time. He experimented with etching, 
he copied a battle painting, and he painted two small subject 
pictures, ‘“The Chemist” and ‘“‘Alchemist,” inspired by Romeo’s 


FLATFORD MILL, ON THE RIVER STOUR 
Painted 1817 
In the National Gallery 


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EARLY YEARS 9 


account of an apothecary’s shop. Leslie says these two paintings 
“have very little merit,’ and we may imagine that Constable in 
painting them thought he was doing what he ought, what might 
be popular, rather than what he himself wanted and was best 
fitted to paint. A temporary despondency regarding his painting, 
together with the breakdown of an old clerk who had been 
eighteen years with Mr. Golding Constable, caused the artist 
in 1797 to enter his father’s counting-house. Exactly how long 
John Constable was engaged on this clerical work is not cer- 
tainly known, but in 1799 he took up his brush again and never 
afterwards laid it aside. 

In February 1799, probably by the advice and goodwill of 
Farington, he was admitted as a student to the Royal Academy 
Schools, and establishing himself in rooms at 23, Cecil Street, 
Strand, close to Somerset House which was then the head- 
quarters of the Academy, he worked hard at both drawing from 
the antique and painting. He copied ‘‘a sweet little picture by 
Jacob Ruysdael,” which somebody lent him, and two landscapes 
by Richard Wilson. In August he visited Ipswich and wrote 
to Smith, “It is a most delightful country for a painter. I fancy 
I see Gainsborough in every hedge and hollow tree.’’ Constable 
was now finding his true vocation, and though the sketches 
made during his first visit to Ipswich are lost, his letters make 
it clear that he was painting from Nature each day and every 
day, ‘‘ by all the daylight we have, and that is little enough.” 
Of the work Constable did at the Royal Academy, almost the 
only thing that remains is a remarkably fine study in black and 
white chalk of a recumbent nude male figure, now in the Vic- 
toria and Albert Museum, South Kensington. The drawing and 


B 


10 JOHN CONSTABLE 


modelling of this figure, and particularly of the legs, are so 
good that this study is unique among Constable’s work; it 
shows that he must have worked most conscientiously and 
strenuously at the figure, though his heart was never really in 
the business, and his subsequent portraits and figure paintings 
were not nearly so satisfying. According to his own account 
Constable found it necessary “‘to fag at copying, some time yet, 
to acquire execution,”’ but all the time he was in London he was 
secretly longing to be back in the country painting from Nature. 
In a letter to his old friend the plumber Dunthorne he says, 
‘This fine weather almost makes me melancholy; it recalls so 
forcibly every scene we have visited and drawn together. I 
even love every stile and stump, and every lane in the village, 
so deep-rooted are early impressions.”’ 

In 1800 Constable spent some weeks in Helmingham Park, 
taking possession of an empty parsonage, and in a letter to the 
same correspondent he expresses his happiness at being “quite 
alone among the oaks and solitudes.”’ Iwo of the drawings he 
did here came into the possession of C. R. Leslie, who says that 
‘though slight and merely in black and white, they show that 
he at that time possessed a true sense of the beautiful in com- 
position.”” From another letter to Dunthorne we learn that in 
the following year Constable moved to 50, Rathbone Place, 
where he rented three rooms, one of them with three windows 
providing him with a good light for painting. Modest enough 
about his own powers, Constable confidentially informs Dun- 
thorne that he is disgusted with the “‘cold trumpery stuff ’’ which 
passes as landscapes among some of his artist acquaintances, and 
he resolved to keep “more to himself” than he did formerly. 


EARLY YEARS II 


An artist before natural scenery, Constable seems to have 
become a moralist when contemplating the human figure. In 
1802 he was absorbed by the anatomical lectures given at the 
Royal Academy Schools by a Mr. Brookes, but while he made 
many accurate and beautifully coloured anatomical drawings, 
these lectures roused the moral and religious feelings of the 
man rather than any artistic ambitions. Writing to Dunthorne 
he enthusiastically exclaims: ‘Excepting astronomy, and that 
I know little of, I believe no study is really so sublime, or goes 
more to carry the mind to the Divine Architect. Indeed, the 
whole machine which it has pleased God to form for the 
accommodation of the real man, the mind, during its probation 
in this vale of tears, is as wonderful as the contemplation of it 
is affecting. I see, however, many instances of the truth, and a 
melancholy truth it is, that a knowledge of the things created 
does not always lead to a veneration of the Creator. Many of 
the young men in this theatre are reprobates.”’ 

There are few passages in all Constable’s letters which give a 
better indication than this of his deeply religious nature, and 
while on the subject it may be said at once that Constable’s own 
record is singularly pure and stainless; his life contained no 
passages which a biographer would desire to omit or white- 
wash. 

It was in this year, 1802, that Constable exhibited for the 
first time at the Royal Academy, his picture being entitled 
simply ‘‘Landscape,” but he had sent the year before and 
been rejected. In later years the artist told Leslie of having 
taken his rejected picture, a view of Flatford Mill, to the Presi- 
dent of the Academy, Mr. Benjamin West, who consoled him 


12 JOHN CONSTABLE 


for his disappointment, saying, ““Don’t be disheartened young 
man, we shall hear of you again; you must have loved Nature 
very much before you could have painted this.’’ West then took 
a piece of chalk and showed Constable how he might improve 
the chiaroscuro by some additional touches of light between 
the stems and branches of the trees, saying, “‘Always remember, 
sir, that light and shadow never stand still.’’ Constable said this 
was the best lecture, because a practical one, on chiaroscuro 
he ever heard. 

Meanwhile Constable, now in his twenty-sixth year, was 
no nearer earning a living by his brush than he had been at the 
start. The only “‘jobs’”’ he appears to have secured as yet were 
to copy a portrait and to paint “a background to an ox.” He 
was tempted to accept a position as drawing-master in a school 
which Dr. Fisher, rector of Langham and afterwards Bishop of 
Salisbury, procured for him; but, again, Benjamin West stood 
his friend and warned him that to accept it would be to give 
up all hopes of distinction as a painter. West not only gave 
this advice, but extricated the young artist from a difficulty by 
himself explaining to Dr. Fisher, in a manner that could not 
possibly give offence, why Constable ought to decline his well- 
intentioned offer. 

In a letter to Dunthorne this same summer, Constable makes 
his now world-famed profession of faith: ‘For the last two 
years I have been running after pictures, and seeking the truth 
at second hand. I have not endeavoured to represent Nature 
with the same elevation of mind with which I set out, but have 
rather tried to make my performances look like the work of 
other men. I am come to a determination to make no idle 


EARLY YEARS 13 





visits this summer, nor to give up my time to commonplace 
people. I shall return to Bergholt, where I shall endeavour to 
get a pure and unaffected manner of representing the scenes 
that may employ me. ‘There is little or nothing in the exhibition 
worth looking up to. There 1s room enough for a natural painter. 
The great vice of the present day is bravura, an attempt to do 
something beyond the truth. Fashion always had, and will 
have, its day; but truth in all things only will last, and can only 
have just claims on posterity.” 

Beyond all question there was room for “‘a natural painter”’ in 
this age, when artificiality was the rage and the fashion, but 
could the natural painter ever hope to make a living? Unswayed 
by thoughts of ways and means Constable set about carrying 
out his theories in practice, and the first fruits of his renewed 
efforts were two landscapes and two “Studies from Nature”’ 
which he exhibited at the Academy in 1803. They appear to 
have attracted little notice, but Constable was not discouraged 
and writing to his friend Dunthorne he said confidentially : 
‘The exhibition is a very indifferent one on the whole. In the 
landscape way most miserable. . . . There are, however, some 
good portraits. . 

‘Tt feel now, more than ever, a decided conviction that I 
shall sometime or other make some good pictures. Pictures 
that shall be valuable to posterity, if I reap not the benefit of 
them. This hope, added to the great delight I find in the art 
itself, buoys me up, and makes me pursue it with ardour. 

‘‘ Panorama painting seems all the rage. ‘There are four or 
five now exhibiting, and Mr. R—. is coming out with another, 
a view of Rome, which I have seen.”’ 


14 JOHN CONSTABLE 


The great event of this year for Constable was a sea-trip he 
made, before the opening of the Academy, from London to 
Deal in the Coutts, an East Indiaman whose captain was a 
friend of Mr. Golding Constable. ‘This voyage really gave 
Constable his first insight into the art of the marine painter, 
and he relates his experiences in a letter to Dunthorne :— 

‘“‘T was near a month on board, and was much employed in 
making drawings of ships in all situations. I saw all sorts of 
weather. Some the most delightful, and some as melancholy. 
But such is the enviable state of a painter that he finds delight 
in every dress Nature can possibly assume. . . 

‘At Chatham I hired a boat to see the men-of-war.... I 
sketched the Victory in three views. She was the flower of the 
flock, a three decker of (some say) 112 guns. She looked very 
beautiful, fresh out of dock and newly painted. When I saw 
her they were bending the sails; which circumstances, added 
to avery fine evening, made a charming effect. . . . The worst 
part of the story is that I have lost all my drawings. The ship 
was such a scene of confusion, when I left her, that although I 
had done my drawings up very carefully, I left them behind. 
When I found, on landing, that I had left them, and saw the 
ship out of reach, I was ready to faint, I hope, however, I may 
see them again some time or other.” 

Fortunately Constable did manage to recover about 130 of 
his marine drawings, and he made good use of his Victory 
studies three years later for his water-colour, ““H.M.S. Victory 
in the Battle of ‘Trafalgar, between Two French Ships of the 
Line,’’ which was exhibited in 1806. The Victory Constable 
knew intimately, and he was able to visualize its position in the 


EARLY YEARS 15 


battle from a description given him by a Suffolk man who had 
been on Nelson’s ship. 

Between 1804 and 1807 we know little of Constable’s doings 
because as yet biographers have discovered no letters to or 
from him covering this period. In 1804 he did not exhibit at 
the Academy and much of his time this year was occupied in 
painting an altar-piece for Brantham Church, near Bergholt, 
the subject being “‘Christ blessing little Children.” I had a 
good opportunity of studying this large picture, in which the 
figures are life-size, when it was lent to the Constable Exhibition 
at the Leeds Art Gallery, and though it cannot be considered 
a great achievement, and is rather brown and dull in colour, I 
found that it had a certain tenderness in the conception and 
treatment which went some way towards neutralizing the defects 
for which is has been criticized. Sir C. J. Holmes has pro- 
nounced it to be ‘‘a feeble imitation of West’s religious works,”’ 
and no doubt Constable was influenced by Benjamin West in 
this painting, but the feeling is genuine and not mawkish. 
Leslie said of it, ‘The arrangement of the masses is good, but 
it has no other merit,’ yet as a matter of fact the arrangement 
of the figures, all standing except a child in the Saviour’s arms, 
becomes a little monotonous, and I would rather say that its 
chief merit is its simplicity and its expression, fervent though 
weak, of piety and reverence. 

Though essentially a religious man, Constable doubtless felt 
that he would never attain excellence in the painting of religious 
subjects, and only once again in his life did he attempt an altar- 
piece. This was four years later, in 1808, when he executed a 
single half-length figure of the Saviour blessing the bread and 





THE HAY-WA. iN 


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EARLY YEARS 19 


wine for Nayland Church, which is within a short walk of East 
Bergholt. In this painting Constable shows more originality in 
his colour scheme, Leslie admitting that the broken purples 
and brownish yellows in the draperies are “very agreeable,”’ 
and the effect of lamplight on the face is not unskilful; but the 
work is not impressive as a whole, and considering the localities 
of the two churches we shall not be far wrong in assuming that 
Constable knowingly went out of his own particular field of art 
chiefly in the endeavour to do a kindness and give pleasure to 
his neighbours. 7 
More important than either of these altar-pieces was a journey 
to the Lake Country, which Constable made in 1806, on the 
advice of his maternal uncle, David Pike Watts, who defrayed 
his expenses for the tour. Some of the sketches made by the 
artist in Westmorland and Cumberland are now in the Victoria 
and Albert Museum, South Kensington, and are considered to 
be among the very best of his water-colours. But though this 
journey furnished Constable with subjects for some small 
_ pictures subsequently exhibited, the grandiose scenery of the 
lakes did not appeal to him so strongly as the more homely 
scenes in his native Suffolk. Perhaps his innate modesty 
restrained him from attempting to depict the wild and terrible 
in Nature, but whatever the cause he left the lakes to Turner, 
and made his own name immortal by the interpretation of more 
placid scenes. Leslie declares that Constable confessed to him 
that “‘the solitude of mountains oppressed his spirits. His 
nature was peculiarly social and could not feel satisfied with 
scenery, however grand in itself, that did not abound in 
human associations. He required villages, churches, farmhouses, 


20 JOHN CONSTABLE 


and cottages; and I believe it was as much from natural 
temperament as from early impressions that his first love, in 
landscape, was also his latest love.” 

Some of the results of this excursion were shown at the 
Royal Academy, ‘“‘A View in Westmorland,” “‘Keswick Lake,” 
and “Bow Fell” in 1807, and “Borrowdale,” “A Scene in 
Cumberland,”’ and ‘“Windermere Lake’”’ in 1808; but somehow 
neither then nor since have these landscapes ever attained a 
place in public favour ever approaching the artist’s Suffolk and 
southern landscapes. 

Meanwhile events were conspiring to seduce the painter from 
devoting himself solely to landscape painting. In 1806 he 
visited a family of bankers named Lloyd at Birmingham, painted 
several of their portraits and apparently gave satisfaction to the 
sitters. His own family, who knew nothing about art—except 
that the most famous landscape painter of his age, Richard 
Wilson, R.A., the ‘‘ Father of British Landscape,” nearly died 
of starvation—and were perfectly satisfied with the portraits of 
themselves which John had painted, were all inclined to push 
him towards the more remunerative branch of portraiture. 
A great sensation was caused in 1811 when Benjamin West’s 
picture of “Christ healing the Sick”’ was sold for £3,000. Con-. 
stable’s mother saw it and thought her John’s altar-piece at 
Brantham just as good and rather better. With the best inten- 
tions the good lady hastened to write to her son, saying, “In 
truth, my dear John, though in all human probability my head 
will be laid low long ere it comes to pass, yet with my present 
light, I can perceive no reason why you should not one day 
with diligence and attention be the performer of a picture 


EARLY YEARS 21 


worth {£3,000.”’ Poor dear woman, how surprised she would 
have been had anyone told her that a hundred years later a 
collector would pay £100,000 for a landscape. 

Worst of all, Constable fell in love, he wanted to marry, and 
to marry he required an income, not merely an allowance. In 
1800 a little girl came to visit her grandfather, the Rev. Dr. 
Durand Rhudde, rector of East Bergholt and Brantham. Her 
name was Maria Bicknell, and her father, Charles Bicknell, was 
solicitor to the Admiralty and lived in Spring Gardens, London. 
Constable made little Miss Bicknell’s acquaintance during her 
first visit to her grandfather, and saw a good deal of her during 
subsequent visits, but it was not till about 1810 apparently that 
he discovered he was in love with her and seriously entertained 
the idea to make her his wife. From the charming series of 
letters, preserved in Leslie’s ““Memoirs,’”’ which set forth the 
history of Constable’s courtship and marriage, it would appear 
that he definitely proposed to Miss Bicknell some time in 
October, 1811. In the first letter of this series, dated November 
2nd that year, Miss Bicknell, who was then visiting a friend in 
the country, writes : “‘I am very impatient, as you may imagine, 
to hear from Papa, on the subject so fraught with interest to us 
both; but was unwilling to delay writing to you, as you would 
be ignorant of the cause of such seeming inattention. . . . You 
know my sentiments; I shall be guided by my father in every 
respect. Should he acquiesce in my wishes, I shall be happier 
than I can express. If not, I shall have the consolation of 
reflecting that I am pleasing him, a charm that will in the end 
give the greatest satisfaction to my mind.” 

These are most proper sentiments, no doubt, for an early 


22 JOHN CONSTABLE 


nineteenth-century young lady, though they read strangely in 
the twentieth century. “‘Papa,” according to his daughter, was 
both ‘reasonable and kind”’; he bore the artist no personal ill-will 
and raised no objection to the match except “‘on the score of that 
necessary evil, money.’’ But unfortunately a still more power- 
ful force resolved to oppose the union tooth and nail. This was 
old Dr. Rhudde, who, it was known, intended to bequeath a 
large sum of money to his granddaughter Maria, and did not 
wish her to marry an impecunious artist. In the circumstances 
Miss Bicknell was disposed to abandon hopes and resign herself 
to nothing more than a friendship with the artist. ““We should 
both of us be bad subjects for poverty, should we not?” she 
writes. “Even painting would go on badly; it could hardly 
survive in domestic worry.” 

When Constable, more courageous, assured her, “‘We have 
only to consider our union as an event that must happen, and 
we shall yet be happy,’ Maria primly replied : “You grieve 
and surprise me by continuing so sanguine on a subject alto- 
gether hopeless. I cannot endure that you should harbour 
expectations that must terminate in disappointment. I never 
can consent to act in opposition to the wishes of my father. 
How, then, can I continue a correspondence wholly dis- 
approved of by him? ... You must be certain that you 
cannot write without increasing feelings that must be entirely 
suppressed. You will, therefore, I am sure, see the impro- 
priety of sending me any more letters.”’ 

This was in December, 1811, and Constable, persistent and 
certainly not easily discouraged, returned to the attack in the 
following spring, when he appears to have broken down her 


EARLY YEARS 23 


self-denying ordinance, and a regular exchange of letters took 
place. In one, dated April, 1812, occurs the significant passage : 
“I am now engaged with portraits. Mr. Watts sat to me this 
morning, and seems pleased with what is going on. I am 
copying a picture for Lady Heathcote, her own portrait as 
Hebe.” In other words, the great landscape artist was turning 
himself into a portrait-painting hack in the endeavour to 
improve his income. Also, he calls on the formidable Dr. 
Rhudde—“‘who was very courteous’”—and Constable con- 
gratulates himself on this tactful advance, confessing that 
“though this may not better our cause, it cannot make it 
- worse.” 

In May matters have so far improved that Constable writes 
to “My dearest Maria,’ and Miss Bicknell replies to ““My dear 
John.” During this month the artist’s true friend, the Rev. 
John Fisher, afterwards Archdeacon Fisher, chaplain to his 
uncle, the Bishop of Salisbury, tries to persuade the artist to 
visit him and paint in the open air at Salisbury. But the slave 
of love in London actually boasts, “I am getting on with my — 
picture for Lady Heathcote. Lady Louisa Manners has a 
wretched copy by Hoppner from Sir J. Reynolds, which she 
wishes me to repaint. ... I am determined not to fritter 
away the summer, if I can help it.”’ 

So June comes and finds Constable still in London, set on 
money-making by portraiture. On the roth he writes to Miss 
Bicknell that he has completed a portrait of Dr. Fisher, Bishop 
of Salisbury, “quite to their satisfaction’ —that is of Dr. and 
Mrs. Fisher. “‘I am to make a duplicate of it for the palace at 
Exeter.”’ In a letter dated June 15th the true Constable breaks 


24 | JOHN CONSTABLE 


out with the cry : “I am making sad ravages of my time with 
the wretched portraits I mentioned to you. I am ungallant 
enough to allude entirely to the ladies’ portraits. I see no end, 
if I stay, to my labours in Pall Mall.” 

And all this time Constable is “‘sighing for the country.” At 
last, in the third week of June, he tears himself from London 
and gets back to East Bergholt. On July 22nd he writes: “I 
have been living a hermit-like life, though always with my 
pencil in my hand. . . . How much real delight have I had 
with the study of landscape this summer !”’ But even in the 
country circumstances conspire to seduce the artist from the 
peaceful pursuit of landscape painting. On September 6th he 
writes : “I am going to-morrow to stay a few days at General 
Rebow’s, near Colchester, to paint his little girl, an only child, 
seven years old; I believe I am to paint the general and his lady 
at some future time.” | 

In November, 1812, a fire broke out at the house in Charlotte 
Street, where Constable was living. Fortunately, he lost 
nothing and only suffered “‘a temporary inconvenience,” but 
his goodness of heart and courage at this time were displayed 
by his heroically re-entering the burning house and mounting 
through the smoke to the garret in order to rescue the fortune 
of a poor woman servant who, in her fright, had left all her 
money under her pillow. 

This same month his mother, an exemplary parent, and yet 
utterly unable to understand the real genius of her son, again 
endeavours to push John further along the wrong road by 
writing : ““You now so greatly excel in portraits that I hope 
you will pursue a path the most likely to bring you fame and 


EARLY YEARS 25 


wealth, by which you can alone expect to obtain the object of 
your fondest wishes.’’ His lady love was no more helpful. 
She expresses sorrow at seeing how ‘unsettled’? John has 
become, and sententiously continues : ‘You will allow others, 
without half your abilities, to outstrip you in the race of fame, 
and then look back with sorrow on time neglected and oppor- 
tunities lost, and perhaps blame me as the cause of all this woe. 
Exert yourself while it is yet in your power; the path of duty is 
alone the path of happiness.”’ 

Though Constable had a good deal of ill-health, both in 
1812 and 1813, he continued to “‘exert’’ himself, painting 
Nature because he loved her and portraits from a sense of duty. 
What little reputation he enjoyed at this time was as a land- 
scape painter, and he continued to contribute landscapes to 
the Royal Academy exhibitions. His four small pictures there 
in 1812 included a “‘View of Salisbury” and a “Flatford Mill’; 
in 1813 he exhibited “Landscape : Boys Bathing” and “Land- 
scape: Morning.’ In June, John Fisher wrote to him from 
Salisbury stating he had heard Constable’s larger picture 
“‘spoken of here, by no inferior judge, as one of the best in the 
exhibition.”’ Yet, in his frantic desire to get his finances into 
a marriageable condition, Constable lacked the courage to 
leave portraiture alone. At the end of June he was on the 
point of leaving London for Suffolk, but he writes : “‘I was, 
however, prevented by a call on me for portraits; for I assure 
you, my reputation in that way is much on the increase. One 
of them, a portrait of the Rev. George Bridgman, a brother of 
Lord Bradford, far excels any of my former attempts in that 
way, and is doing me a great deal of service. My price for a 
















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_ Exhibited at the Royal Academy, 1830 pe 
In the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensingtc 
















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EARLY YEARS 29 


head is fifteen guineas; and I am tolerably expeditious when 
I can have fair play at my sitter. I have been much engaged 
for Lady Heathcote, who seems bent on serving me. My pic- 
tures of herself and her mother occupy either end of the large 
drawing-room in Grosvenor Square; they have magnificent 
frames, and make a great dash. She is to bring me a handsome 
boy at the Christmas holidays. . . . I am now leaving London 
for the only time in my life with my pockets full of money. 
I am entirely free from debt (not that my debts ever exceeded 
my usual annual income), and I have required no assistance 
from my father.”’ 

To appreciate the a anipeanee of these lines we should 
remember that the writer was now thirty-seven years of age, 
and the money in his pocket, “‘for the only time,’’ was earned 
by portraits, not landscapes. In spite of the real sacrifices he 
was making, Constable’s matrimonial suit made little progress. 
Mr. Bicknell did not dislike him personally, but he would not 
consent to any engagement so long as his wife’s father dis- 
approved of the match, fearing that if he did so Maria might 
lose her expected legacy from Dr. Rhudde. Early in 1814 
Constable begs Miss Bicknell to keep up a weekly correspond- 
ence. This, she declares, is “totally impracticable,” but she 
softens her refusal by saying, “‘I will write as often as I can.” 

From this year (1814) dates the beginning of a slight turn in 
Constable’s fortunes. At the very moment when his relatives 
were expressing concern that he should still devote so much of 
his time to the production of unmarketable pictures, Constable 
sold two landscapes, a small picture exhibited at the British 
Gallery, to a Mr. Allnutt, and a larger painting of ‘“‘A Lock’’ 


Cc 


St. Victor's Schoo! Library 
Los Angeles 46, Calif. 


30 JOHN CONSTABLE 


to a Mr. James Carpenter. ‘He is a stranger to me, and bought 
it because he liked it.”’ Mr. Allnutt also was a stranger, but 
having views of his own about the painting of skies, he foolishly 
employed Linnell to substitute another sky for that painted by 
Constable. He lived to lament his vandalism, and some years 
later the chastened connoisseur humbly admitted his error and 
approached Constable, who good-naturedly not only restored 
his own sky, but painted an entirely new picture of the same 
subject on a slightly smaller scale so that it might pair exactly 
with another painting hung in the same room. Mr. Allnutt 
subsequently related that when he wished to settle the account 
for the work Constable had done, the artist protested that he 
had no charge to make, but was himself under an obligation to 
his patron, saying “‘I had been the means of making a painter 
of him, by buying the first picture he ever sold to a stranger, 
which gave him so much encouragement, that he determined 
to pursue a profession in which his friends had great doubts of 
his success.”’ 

In 1814 Constable painted the picture of “Willy Lott’s 
House,”’ a small farmhouse on the river close to Flatford Mill, 
now hanging in the Victoria and Albert Museum, South 
Kensington, and further sent two more landscapes, “‘Ploughing 
Scene in Suffolk” and “A Ferry,” to the Royal Academy. 

Encouraged by this small measure of success, Constable 
returned to his landscape studies with renewed zeal and 
increased power. With his landscapes proving saleable, John 
contemplates married bliss as within the bounds of an early 
possibility. He writes optimistically to his beloved Maria, who 
replies : “Indeed, my dear John, people cannot live now upon 


EARLY YEARS 31 


£400 a year; it is a bad subject, therefore adieu to it.”’ And the 
self-possessed young lady expresses mild surprise that John 
should stay in the country at this time and so miss the oppor- 
tunity of seeing in London “‘our illustrious visitors,” the 
Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia. Alas, John 
Constable was no courtier, and had eyes for no monarch but 
King Sol! Fortunately for posterity, the artist withstood the 
temptation to “see the sights” in London, and celebrated the 
victory of the allies over Napoleon in his own way—by remain- 
ing quietly in the country at East Bergholt all the summer and 
all the autumn, achieving, among other things, his first real 
masterpiece, painted entirely in the open air, the famous 
“Boat-building”’ (see illustration), which shows us a meadow 
at Flatford with a barge on the stocks, while beyond it the 
River Stour glitters in the still sunshine of a hot summer’s day. 
‘This picture,” said Leslie, “is a proof that, in landscape, 
what painters call warm colours are not necessary to produce 
a warm effect. It has indeed no positive colour, and there is 
much of grey and green in it; but such is its atmospheric truth, 
that the tremulous vibration of the heated air near the ground 
seems visible.”’ If Constable’s mind was uneasy about his love 
affair at this time, no restlessness of his was reflected in his 
painting, and all who see this beautiful picture in the Victoria 
and Albert Museum will gladly admit that the work is the quin- 
tessence of serenity and repose. It was exhibited in the following 
year at the Royal Academy but, sad to relate, found no purchaser 
then or afterwards. This “perfect work,” as Leslie calls it, re- 
mained in the possession of the artist to the end of his life. 
Another great point, in Constable’s estimation, was gained 


32 JOHN CONSTABLE 


in 1815, when Mr. Bicknell permitted him to be “a visitor in 
a friendly way” at Spring Gardens. As against this favour 
gained, however, was set a serious loss, that of his mother, 
who in May had a paralytic stroke which terminated fatally; 
and by a strange coincidence Mrs. Bicknell, Maria’s mother, 
died a few days afterwards. The lovers consoled one another, 
and that summer Maria’s letters were less “‘practical’’ and far 
more sympathetic. “How delightful this sweet rain will make 
those dear fields look, that I envy you the sight of,’”’ she writes 
in July. “How much you must enjoy painting in the open air, 
after Mr. Dawe’s room.”’ Dawe, by the way, was a man who 
earlier in the year had given Constable the “‘job”’ of painting a 
background in a large picture. Again, in September, she 
writes : “‘How charmed you must be with this long continu- 
ance of fine weather. ... Nature and you must be greater 
friends than ever.” The reader begins to have hopes that 
Maria, after all, is not ill-fitted to the honour which Constable 
proposes to do her. 

This mild but, even so, new-found happiness of the pair 
was rudely disturbed in the following February, when old Dr. 
Rhudde discovered that Constable had been allowed to pay 
occasional visits to Spring Gardens, and wrote a violent letter 
to Mr. Bicknell. “Poor dear Papa, to have such a letter written 
to him !” wails his daughter. “I know not how it will end. 
Perhaps the storm may blow over; God only knows. We must 
be patient. I am sure your heart is too good not to feel for my 
father. He would wish to make us all happy if he could. Pray, 
do not come to town just yet.”’ A week later, on February 13th, 
she writes : ““The kind doctor says he ‘considers me no longer 


EARLY YEARS 33 


as his granddaughter,’ and, from the knowledge I have of his 
character, I infer he means what he says. . . . Papa says, if 
we were to marry and live at Bergholt, he thinks the doctor 
would leave the place.” The modern admirer of the artist can 
contemplate this prospect with equanimity, but to the Bicknells, 
and no doubt to Constable himself, this would have appeared 
to be a calamity. Constable, who had always disliked his visits 
being kept a secret, replies in a manly tone: ‘‘My sisters trust 
the calm will not long be disturbed, though I have always 
feared it was a deceitful one, and that we have been making 
ourselves happy over a barrel of gunpowder.”’ Later he says: 
“T shall not concern myself with the justice or injustice of 
others; that must rest with themselves; it is sufficient for us to 
know that we have done nothing to deserve the ill opinion of 
any one. Our business is now more than ever with ourselves. 
I am entirely free from debt, and I trust, could I be made 
happy, to receive a good deal more than I do now by my 
profession. After this, my dearest Maria, I have nothing more 
to say, than the sooner we are married the better; and from 
this time I shall cease to listen to any arguments the other way, 
from any quarter. I wish your father to know what I have 
written, if you think with me.” 

All this winter Constable had been further troubled by 
anxiety over his father, whose health was in a very bad state. 
Towards the end of March, 1816, the artist arrived in London 
with two pictures for the Academy, “A Wheatfield” and “A 
Wood : Autumn,” but was recalled to Bergholt by the death of 
his father, who died suddenly “while sitting in his chair, as 
usual, without a sigh or pang.” 


34 JOHN CONSTABLE 


With both his parents dead, Constable, though he enjoyed 
the affectionate regards of his brothers and sisters, felt lonelier 
than ever, and hungered for a home of his own. The storm 
appears to have blown over, and during the summer John 
renewed his visits to Miss Bicknell. In August she writes: 
“Thank you, my dear John, for sending me your sweet picture. 
Come early this evening.’’ During this month the artist visited 
his friends the Rebows, who behaved most kindly and gener- 
ously. The general commissioned Constable to paint two 
landscapes, one of his park and another of a wood. Being well 
acquainted with the artist’s love story, the general mentioned 
that while he could take his own time about them, he would 
pay for them in advance, knowing, as Constable writes, “that 
we may soon want a little ready money. Another good friend, 
the Rev. John Fisher, wrote to Constable in September strongly 
urging him not to delay his wedding any longer, and inviting 
the artist and his prospective bride to spend their honeymoon 
with Mrs. Fisher and himself. ‘The archdeacon’s letter was 
very much to the point : “I intend to be in London on Tuesday 
evening, the 24th, and on Wednesday shall hold myself ready 
and happy to marry you. There, you see, I have used no 
roundabout phrases, but said the thing at once, in good plain 
English. So do you follow my example, and get you to your 
lady, and instead of blundering out long sentences about ‘the 
Hymeneal altar,’ etc., say that on Wednesday, September 25th, 
you are ready to marry her. If she replies, like a sensible 
woman, as I suspect she is, “Well, John, here is my hand, I am 
ready,’ all well and good. If she says,‘ Yes, but another day will 
be more convenient,’ let her name it, and I am at her service.” 


EARLY YEARS 35 


Constable sent Fisher’s letter on to Maria, who now found 
herself firmly impaled on the horns of a dilemma, the warring 
points of which were her duty to her father and the duty which 
she now recognized she owed to John. Before Fisher’s arrival, 
her conscience made one last filial struggle : ‘‘Papa is averse to 
everything I propose. If you please, you may write to him; it 
will do neither good nor harm. I hope we are not going to do 
a very foolish thing. . . . Once more, and for the last time ! 
it is not too late to follow Papa’s advice and wait. . . . Not- 
withstanding all I have been writing, whatever you deem best, 
Ido.” 

John deemed that they had waited long enough. After all, 
they were not children. Maria herself was twenty-nine; John 
had turned forty. The lady could not be ready by the 25th, 
but on October 2nd they were married at St. Martin’s Church 
by Mr. Fisher, and spent the honeymoon with him and Mrs. 
Fisher at Osmington, near Weymouth. 

Anticipating events, it may be said at once that Mr. Bicknell 
soon became reconciled to the marriage and grew very fond of 
his son-in-law. Old Dr. Rhudde was not so easily placated, 
but, somewhat to the surprise of the Constables, when he died, 
in 1819, it became known that he had left his granddaughter 
£4,000. Possibly, had she remained single, Maria might have 
inherited a larger portion of the “necessary evil.’’ 


CHAPTER II 
‘THE MIDDLE YEARS 


HAT married life suited Constable is a thing which 

even the most hardened cynic cannot dispute. He was 
happier now than he had ever been before, and his 
happiness was soon reflected in a series of noble paintings 
surpassing anything he had ever previously achieved. The 
couple set up house at 1, Keppel Street, Russell Square, and 
here was born the first son, to whom the name of his father 
was given. Leslie, his biographer, who got to know the artist in- 
timately soon after the marriage, says that the boy was as often in 
his father’s arms as in those of his nurse or his mother. “‘ His fond- 
ness for children exceeded, indeed, that of any man I ever knew.” 
In 1817 he exhibited at the British Gallery “‘A Harvest-field 
with Reapers and Gleaners,’’ and at the Academy “Scene on 
a Navigable River,” ““Wivenhoe Park,” “A Cottage,” and a 
portrait of Mr. Fisher. But now he was devoting himself more 
and more to landscape, and spent the autumn at Bergholt 
collecting material for his next year’s pictures. Four landscapes 
were sent to the Academy in 1818, the most important being 
“Landscape: Breaking up of aShower.” To the British Gallery 
he sent “A Cottage in a Cornfield,’ of which Leslie observes : 
“The cottage in this little picture isclosely surrounded by thecorn, 
which on the side most shaded from the sun, remains green, while 
over the rest of the field it has ripened; one of many circum- 
stances that may be discovered in Constable’s landscapes, which 


mark them as the productions of anincessant observer of Nature.” 
36 


THE MIDDLE YEARS 37 


Though Constable was painting at this time as well as ever 
he did, his exhibits appear to have attracted little notice; but in 
1819 he had a greater success at the Academy with “‘A Scene 
on the River Stour,” afterwards known as ‘‘Constable’s White 
Horse,’ from the white horse in a barge near the foreground. 
Measuring 51 by 73 inches, this was the largest and most 
important work Constable had yet produced; it marked a 
distinct advance and attracted more notice than any of his 
previous exhibits. It was purchased by Archdeacon Fisher for 
100 guineas, and was probably the cause of Constable being 
elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in the following 
November. Altogether, 1819 was a good year for Constable, 
his father’s affairs being then wound up he inherited a sum of 
£4,000, and his wife presented him with a “lovely little girl,” 
to whom his good friend Fisher stood godfather. In the follow- 
ing year he repeated his success at the Academy by exhibiting 
his magnificent “Stratford Mull,” which was sold for 100 
guineas, and three-quarters of acentury later established a “‘Con- 
stable record” when it brought {£8,925 at the Huth Sale in 1895. 

This is the picture which was engraved by David Lucas as 
“The Young Waltonians,” the new title being taken from the 
group of children fishing in the foreground. On the left-hand 
side of the canvas a glimpse is given of the old water-mill, which 
no longer exists, while to the right and in the middle distance 
a barge floats on the placid, willow-shaded waters of the Stour. 
A group of tall trees forms the centre of the composition, and 
the sky is exceedingly beautiful with light clouds which throw 
their shadows over a rising distance. Archdeacon Fisher pur- 
chased the picture as a present for his solicitor, Mr. ‘Tinney, of 


38 JOHN CONSTABLE 


Salisbury, but since he considered the price of 100 guineas to 
be ‘‘far below its value,” and since Constable himself was under 
some obligation to Mr. Tinney for services rendered, the reverend 
gentleman always alluded to the picture as “‘our joint present.” 
The friendship and admiration of Fisher was a great encour- 
agement to Constable at this time, for though his reputation 
was steadily growing and his landscapes were at last beginning 
to find purchasers, it was a slow business, and unquestionably 
his wife could not have lived’in the modest luxury to which she 
was accustomed had not the couple enjoyed the revenue of the 
{£8,000 which they jointly possessed. One great point about 
Fisher was his loyal faith from the first in Constable’s land- 
scapes, and about this time the artist seems to have realized 
that portrait-painting never had been, nor would be, his true 
vocation. Writing to his friend about this time, Constable 
admits, ‘‘I fear (for my family’s sake) I shall never make a 
popular artist, a gentleman and ladies’ painter. But I am spared 
making a fool of myself, and your hand stretched forth, teaches 
me to value what I possess (if I may say so); and this is of more 
consequence than gentlemen and ladies can well imagine.” 
Four pictures were exhibited by Constable at the Academy 
of 1821 : “Hampstead Heath,” “A Shower,” “Harrow,” and 
‘“‘Landscape : Noon.” ‘The last was the third six-foot canvas he 
had painted, encouraged by Fisher’s purchases to continue to 
work on this scale, and afterwards became famous as ‘‘The Hay- 
wain”’ (see illustration). Constable himself at first thought this 
picture ‘‘not so grand” as Mr. ‘Tinney’s (1.e., “Stratford Mill’), 
but confessed that “Owing, perhaps, to the masses not being 
so impressive, the power of the chiaroscuro is lessened, but it 


THE MIDDLE YEARS 39 


has a more novel look than I expected.’ There was in truth a 
real novelty in this picture, but its vivacity and freshness did 
not make anything like the sensation at the Academy that they 
did in Paris three years later. 

Opinions differ—always have differed, and no doubt always 
will differ—as to which is the greatest of Constable’s big land- 
scapes, but “The Hay-wain”’ is certainly one of the very best 
and the picture which, in the artist’s own lifetime, made the 
greatest sensation of any. It is a typical English landscape, 
with a stormy sky showing masses of cumuli moving across the 
blue. The farmhouse on the left is none other than “Willy 
Lott’s House,”’ which figures in so many of Constable’s paint- 
ings. It is identical with that depicted in “The Valley Farm,”’ 
and its original name was “Gibeon’s Farm,” as, Mr. Herbert 
Tompkins tells us, “may be seen by a headstone at East | 
Bergholt, where William Lott lies buried.”’* This farm was 
immediately adjoining Flatford Mill, and though the truth of 
the picture to the reality is vouched for by all who have wan- 
dered, like Constable, along the banks of the Stour, the real 
greatness of the picture lies in the fact that it is not only a 
faithful rendering of the actual scene, but is also an impressive 
interpretation of a mood of Nature. It is one of the earliest and 
most brilliant paintings of “‘weather”’ in British art. 

Though Constable continued ‘to find the themes of his 
greatest pictures in the near neighbourhood of his birthplace, 
he did not lack opportunity to change his painting-ground. In 
June, 1821, he visited Berkshire and Oxfordshire with his 
friend Fisher, and made pencil drawings and water-colours of 

* Herbert W. Tompkin’s ‘‘ Constable,” 1907. 


40 JOHN CONSTABLE 


scenery around Reading, Newbury, Abingdon, and Blenheim. 
A year earlier Constable had moved his home to 2, Lower 
Terrace, Hampstead, and in this north-western suburb the 
artist appeared to find themes more congenial to his powers 
than any outside his beloved Suffolk. The truth seems to have 
been that Constable was not a man who took kindly to making 
excursions in search of new subjects. He wanted to know his 
ground more thoroughly, he had to live in it, to master its 
peculiarities, to grow familiar with it and love it, before he was 
altogether happy to record it in paint. Further, his practice of 
painting his pictures, even great six-foot sketches, in the open 
air as much as possible, made a prolonged residence in one 
locality desirable. He was not fond, as other artists have been, 
of rushing off somewhere to make a slight sketch in a day, and 
then working up that sketch in the studio to make a picture. 
For these reasons the topographical range of Constable’s art is 
limited, in comparison with that of ‘Turner and others, and his 
principal paintings, with few exceptions, render scenes near 
Bergholt, his birthplace and country home, at Hampstead, his 
London home, or near Salisbury, the home of his most intimate 
friend, John Fisher, with whom he so often stayed. 

In the Academy of 1822 Constable’s principal contributions 
were again two Hampstead landscapes and “A View on the 
Stour, near Dedham’; but in the following year he broke new 
ground with his beautiful “Salisbury Cathedral from the 
Bishop’s Garden,” as perfect a work as any of his great Suffolk 
landscapes. ‘This picture was a commission from the Bishop of 
Salisbury as a present for his recently married daughter, who 
wanted “‘to have in her house in London a recollection of 


THE MIDDLE YEARS 41 


b] 


Salisbury.”” Constable took a great deal of pains with this 
picture, which perhaps surpasses all his other works in the 
supreme and almost classic beauty of its design, the most 
striking feature of which is the natural sylvan arch through 
which the cathedral is seen. It was a theme which the artist 
must have loved both for its own sake and for its associations, 
and to a man of his affectionate and domestic temperament it 
must have been an added incentive to know that his picture 
was going to one who could not fail to be moved by the scene 
even more deeply than himself. Yet, with everything to keep 
his mind on Salisbury, even here he could not help allowing his 
inalienable affection for Suffolk unconsciously to peep out, as 
Leslie shrewdly discovered in his comment on this picture: 
“In the foreground he introduced a circumstance familiar to 
all who are in the habit of noticing cattle. With cows there is 
generally, if not always, one which is called, not very accurately, 
the master cow, and there is scarcely anything the rest of the 
herd will venture to do until the master has taken the lead. On 
the left of the picture this individual is drinking, and turns 
with surprise and jealousy to another cow approaching the canal 
lower down for the same purpose; they are of the Suffolk 
breed, without horns, and it is a curious mark of Constable’s 
fondness for everything connected with his native county, that 
scarcely an instance may be found of a cow in any of his pictures, 
be the scene where it may, with horns.” 

When Constable moved to Hampstead he retained the use of 
his studio in Keppel Street for some years, but after the death 
of Farington, in 1822, he secured that painter’s more convenient 
rooms at 35, Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square. He had now two 


42 JOHN CONSTABLE 


sons and two daughters, all of whom were ill, as well as himself 
and two of his servants, in the winter of 1822-3. His own state 
of health, and particularly his anxiety over his eldest son John, 
prevented Constable from finishing either of the large pictures 
he had intended to show at the Academy in 1823. The bishop’s 
picture, “‘A Study of Trees,”’ and “‘A Cottage”’ were all that he 
was able to send that year. 

An amusing sidelight on Constable’s private idiosyncrasies 1s 
thrown by a passage in which Fisher thanks the artist for having 
promptly purchased for him two old pictures that he wanted. 
‘“‘My dear Constable,’ he writes, “Where real business is to be 
done, you are the most energetic and punctual of men. In 
smaller matters, such as putting on your breeches, you are apt 
to lose time in deciding which leg shall go in first.” 

In this same letter Fisher wishes he could purchase “The 
Hay-wain,”’ but declares “‘I cannot now reach what it is worth 
and what you must have. . . . It will be of the most value to 
your children by continuing to hang where it does, till you join 
the society of Ruysdael, Wilson, and Claude. As praise and 
money will then be of no value to you, the world will liberally 
bestow both.” Fisher was a true prophet. _ | 

In October, 1823, Constable paid a long visit to Sir George 
and Lady Beaumont in Leicestershire, and was enraptured with 
the collection of pictures he found there. “Believe me,” he 
writes to his wife, “I shall be the better for this visit as long as 
I live.” On November 25th he writes again : ‘I feel that I have 
been at school, and can only hope that my long absence from 
you may ultimately be to my great and lasting improvement as 
an artist, and indeed, in everything.” 


THE MIDDLE YEARS 43 


Some precious fragments of the conversations between 
Constable and his host have been preserved. In those days 
connoisseurs had not allowed for the effect of time in degrading 
the brilliance of pigment, nor had the arts of cleaning and 
restoration advanced to the stage they have reached to-day. 
Darkness in a picture was thought to be a merit, and what was 
merely dirtiness was often praised as ‘“‘tone.”” When Sir George 
Beaumont recommended the colour of an old Cremona fiddle 
for the prevailing tone of everything, Constable answered him 
by laying a violin on the green lawn before the house. Another 
time Sir George, who appeared to think autumn tints essential 
in at least some part of a landscape, whatever the time of year, 
asked : “Do you not find it very difficult to determine where 
to place your brown tree?’ ‘Not in the least,’’ replied Constable, 
“for I never put such a thing into a picture.” 

One of the chief reasons why Constable had so much difficulty 
in getting his landscapes accepted as the masterpieces which 
they really were, was because he ignored these conventions, 
based on a misunderstanding of the Old Masters, and looked at 
Nature for himself and endeavoured to paint the scenes he saw 
in their true colours. 

The ridiculous and, to us, almost incredible length to which 
this craze for brown landscapes was carried in the eighteenth 
and early nineteenth centuries is typically exemplified by one 
Matthews, whose ‘“‘Diary of an Invalid’’ enjoyed a considerable 
popularity in the early part of the last century. Commenting 
on the collection of pictures in the Doria Palace, this wiseacre 
wrote : ““Gaspar Poussin’s green landscapes have no charm for 
me. The fact seems to be, that the delightful green of Nature 


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THE MIDDLE YEARS 47 


cannot be represented in a picture. Our own Glover has 
perhaps made the greatest possible exertions to surmount the 
difficulty, and give with fidelity the real colours of Nature; but 
I believe the beauty of his pictures is in an inverse ratio to their 
fidelity; and that Nature must be stripped of her green livery, 
and dressed in the browns of the painters, or confined to her 
own autumnal tints in order to be transferred to canvas.” 

Needless to remark, when Constable came across this passage 
he was filled with indignation, but it is worth remembering, 
because it shows us so clearly how the great artist who persisted 
in painting Nature in her “‘green livery’? was thereby defying 
the most cherished artistic convention of his day. 

In January, 1824, a Frenchman, who in the previous year 
had tried to purchase ‘The Hay-wain,” again approached 
Constable. Faithful to an old understanding, the artist informed 
Fisher of the proposal. ‘‘Let your ‘Hay Cart’ go to Paris by all 
means,” his friend replied. “I am too much pulled down by 
the agricultural distress to hope to possess it. I would, I think, 
let it go at less than its price for the sake of the éclat it may - 
give you. The stupid English public, which has no judgment 
of its own, will begin to think there is something in you if the 
French make your works national property. You have long lain 
under a mistake; men do not purchase pictures because they 
admire them, but because others covet them.” Eventually, 
Constable sold ‘“’The Hay-wain,”’ another large picture, “The 
Bridge,” and a small picture of “Yarmouth” for {250 to the 
Frenchman, who hastened to take his treasures to France. 
When “The Hay-wain”’ was exhibited that summer in the Paris 
Salon, then held in the Louvre, it was the picture of the year, 


D 


48 JOHN CONSTABLE 


and created immense excitement among the artists. Delacroix, 
one of the leading French painters and colorists of the time, 
was so amazed by its brilliance that on Varnishing Day he 
completely repainted his own picture, ‘The Massacre of Scio,” 
which hung near by, in order that he might heighten its effect 
and endure the competition the better. Further, Constable’s 
picture was not merely a nine-days’ wonder, but had a lasting 
influence on French landscape painting. His influence per- 
meated the group afterwards known as the Barbizon School, 
and Rousseau, Daubigny, Dupré, and others were among the 
first to hail him as master. There was a considerable desire for 
the French Government to purchase ““The Hay-wain,” but the 
owner asked 12,000 francs, which was considered prohibitive. 
Constable, however, was awarded a gold medal, and shortly 
afterwards ““The Hay-wain”’ was sold for £400. Forty-two years 
later it was sold for £1,365, and in 1886 it was presented to the 
National Gallery, London, by Mr. Henry Vaughan. So England 
regained a masterpiece which it deserved to lose. 

This French appreciation of Constable’s art not only helped 
him in London, as Fisher prophesied, but also opened up a 
new market for Constable’s landscapes. ‘That same June an 
unknown French gentleman and his wife called on Constable 
and “‘ordered a little picture,’ and before this Constable had 
undertaken to get ‘“‘seven pictures of a small size” ready for 
Paris by August. Nevertheless, the artist was by no means free 
from money troubles, brought about chiefly by recurrent ill- 
nesses in his family, which added to his expenses and his 
anxieties. In 1825 his wife presented him with a third daughter, 
and this year, as in the previous one, Constable kept his family 


THE MIDDLE YEARS 49 


at Brighton for the sake of their health during a good part of 
the summer, while he himself stayed hard at work in town, and 
could not remain with them for long. 

His principal picture in the exhibition of 1825 was ‘‘The 
Lock”’—that is to say, ‘“Dedham Lock,” and still better known 
under the title of “The Leaping Horse.”’ This picture, now in 
the Diploma Gallery at Burlington House, is usually considered 
one of the artist’s finest works, unsurpassed for its energy and 
movement. Leslie gives an interesting account of the incident 
which gives the painting its popular title. ‘““The chief object in 
its foreground,” he writes, ‘“‘is a horse, mounted by a boy, 
leaping one of the barriers which cross the towing paths along 
the Stour . . . to prevent the cattle from quitting their bounds. 
As these bars are without gates, the horses, which are of a 
much finer race, and kept in better condition than the wretched 
animals that tow the barges near London, are all taught to leap; 
their harness ornamented over the collar with crimson fringe 
adds to their picturesque appearance ; and Constable, by availing 
himself of these advantages, and relieving the horse, which is of a 
dark colour, upon a bright sky, made him avery imposing object.”’ 

Preparatory to painting this big picture, Constable, according 
to his habit, made a six-foot sketch of the same subject on the 
spot. This large sketch is now in the Victoria and Albert 
Museum, and it is exceedingly instructive to compare this 
sketch with the painting at Burlington House. One great 
difference between the two pictures is that whereas, in the 
sketch, the willow tree on the towing path is further to our 
right in front of the barrier and the leaping horse, in the finished 
picture Constable has deliberately moved this willow tree 


50 JOHN CONSTABLE 


further to the left and placed it behind the horse, thereby con- 
siderably improving the rhythmic design of the composition, 
the main line of which now flows diagonally from the mass of 
trees on the extreme left, over the top of the willow, through 
the horse, and is completed by the sloping timber supporting 
the wooden bridge in the foreground to our right. 

This change in the relative positions of the horse and the 
willow is exceedingly important, because it proves that when 
Constable called himself a “natural painter’? he did not mean 
that he intended to copy Nature exactly as he saw it before him 
without any reference to the laws of design and science of 
composition. His aim always was to preserve the effect of 
general truth, but in the manipulation of details he allowed 
himself that latitude of arrangement which is essential to the 
science of picture-making. Vigorous and fine as the sketch for 
“The Leaping Horse’’ may be, it is less satisfactory than the 
picture, because our eyes, falling downwards from the clump 
of trees to the horse, are jerked upwards again by the perpendi- 
cular lines of the willow. In the larger painting at Burlington 
House we have no similar distraction or interruption, but all 
flows smoothly together, gaining thereby for the picture an 
increased harmony and rhythm and unity of effect. Constable 
records the change made in this picture in his own diary, in 
which the following entry occurs :— , 

‘September 7th.—Got up early. Set to work on my large 
picture; took out the old willow stump by the horse, which has 
improved the picture much; made one or two other alterations.” 

From this we learn two things: firstly, that when originally 
exhibited the large picture must have resembled the South 


THE MIDDLE YEARS st 


Kensington sketch more closely, and, secondly, that the picture 
did not find a purchaser by the time the Academy had closed. 

Constable had sold two other landscapes he exhibited at the 
Academy, again to an entire stranger (Mr. Francis Darby, of 
Colebrook Dale), but his pleasure in this renewed success was 
soon overclouded by his anxiety over the health of his son 
John, who was very ill indeed. About this time there is a gap 
in Constable’s correspondence, possibly because he was too 
worried to write much to his friends, but we can gain some idea 
as to the state of his mind and of his finances from a letter 
written to him on August 12th, by Fisher. The good cleric 
offers to take the sick boy into his own house and give him “‘the 
best advice the country affords, with sea air, sea bathing, and 
good food,”’ or, alternatively, if Constable thinks it preferable, 
to take one of his healthy boys and look after him. “As for 
money matters,’ he continues, “‘do not make yourself uneasy. 
Write for anything you want, and send me any picture, in 
pledge, you think proper. Your family or yourself shall have 
the difference whenever it is called for. Whatever you do, 
Constable, get rid of anxiety. It hurts the stomach more than 
arsenic. It generates only fresh cause for anxiety by producing 
inaction and loss of time.” 

While acknowledging himself “overcome by your kind and 
most friendly letter,’ Constable did not take advantage of this 
offer, but instead sent all his family again to Brighton, where 
the boy’s health seems to have improved. In the same letter 
Constable craves Fisher’s forgiveness for having lent his 
picture ‘“The White Horse”’ to an exhibition at Lille. It is a 
little difficult to understand why Constable did not send ““The 


52 JOHN CONSTABLE 


Leaping Horse” to this exhibition. He liked it himself, speaking 
of it once as “silvery, windy, and delicious; all health, and the 
absence of everything stagnant.” If the general public did not 
warm to it then, as it has done later, it was highly praised not 
only by its author’s friends, but by independent artists whose — 
unsolicited tributes ought to have been gratifying. 

One of the most eloquent appreciations uttered concerning 
this famous picture came from the mezzotinter, S. W. Reynolds, 
who undertook to engrave it at his own risk. Writing to 
Constable, he said : “It 1s, no doubt, the best of your works, 
true to Nature, seen and arranged with a professor’s taste and 
judgment. The execution shows in every part a hand of experi- 
ence; the colouring is sweet, fresh, and healthy; bright, not 
gaudy, but deep and clear. Take it for all in all, since the days 
of Gainsborough and Wilson, no landscape has been painted 
with so much truth and originality, so much art, so little 
artifice.” Illness overtook Reynolds while he was working on 
this, and he did not live to complete his plate; but the subject 
was afterwards engraved by David Lucas. 

Early in 1826 Constable was able to inform his friend Fisher 
that he was the recipient of another gold medal from France, 
awarded him at Lille, where he had sent ‘“The White Horse.”’ 
But while his fame was extending and his reputation growing, 
the artist was still in difficulties, for in the same letter he 
confesses : “‘My large picture is at a standstill owing to the 
ruined state of my finances.” This large picture was probably 
“The Opening of Waterloo Bridge,” of which Constable had 
made a sketch so far back as 1817, but though he worked on the 
subject from time to time, he had not yet been able to complete 


THE MIDDLE YEARS 53 


the large picture. To gain bread and butter for his family and 
to pay the doctor’s bills, he could not afford to give the time 
necessary to the continuing of this work, but had to turn to 
something more immediately profitable, the execution of 
various commissions which he had on hand. This is what he 
means, no doubt, in his letter to Fisher; but, having laid aside 
the Waterloo Bridge picture, Constable was able to set to work 
this spring on another good sized painting. This was “The 
Cornfield”’ (see illustration), which, if one may judge by the 
extent to which it has been reproduced, is to-day the most 
popular of all Constable’s pictures. 

In April he writes to his friend Fisher : “I have dispatched a 
large landscape to the Academy, upright, of the size of the 
‘Lock,’ but a subject of a very different nature; inland corn 
fields, a close lane forming the foreground; it is not neglected 
in any part; the trees are more than usually studied, the 
extremities well defined, as well as the stems; they are shaken 
by a pleasant and healthful breeze at noon, 


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while now a fresher gale 
‘““ “Sweeping with shadowy gusts the fields of corn,’ etc. 


‘I am not, however, without my anxieties, though I have not 
neglected my work, or been sparing of my pains. ... I am 
much worn, having worked hard, and have now the consolation 
of knowing I must work a great deal harder, or go to the work- 
house; I have some commissions, however, and I do hope to 
sell the present picture. threatens me with having to 
paint his portrait. 





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THE MIDDLE YEARS 57 


‘He is hospitable, but there is a coarseness about him that is 
intolerable.” 

Picture it ! Constable is now fifty years old, he is already the 
painter of immortal landscapes, and still he is not free from 
the fear of portrait-painting, that one sure refuge for the 
impecunious artist, because it is an ever-present demand firmly 
found on the impregnable rock of human vanity! By this 
time, at any rate, Constable has learnt to dread portraits and is 
conscious that it is unworthy of his true genius to undertake them. 

The exact locality of the scene depicted in “The Cornfield”’ 
has been a matter of some dispute. Once it was thought to be 
a scene in Essex, but later was found to be a field in Suffolk, 
about one mile from the Stour. The church in the picture was 
long thought to be that of Dedham, but in 1869 one of the 
artist’s sons pointed out that Dedham Church is farther to the 
- right, beyond the field of the picture. We are bound to conclude, 
therefore, that the church tower, seen among the trees in the 
background, is justified not by the facts, but by the licence 
permitted to an artist; its presence here is a further proof that 
the artist was not afraid to “‘arrange”’ his subjects, that Constable 
was not the slave, but the master of Nature. Contrary to the 
artist’s expectations, this lovely picture remained unsold, but 
after Constable’s death it was bought for £315 by “an associa- 
tion of gentlemen” and presented to the National Gallery. 

In the November of this year the Constable family was 
increased by the addition of a sixth child, a third son, and in 
the following year (1827) the artist moved to “‘a comfortable 
little house in Well Walk, Hampstead’’—which still stands now 
much as it was in Constable’s day—and only retained a part of 


58 JOHN CONSTABLE 


the premises in Charlotte Street for a studio and showroom. 
To the Academy this year Constable sent a large painting of 
“The Marine Parade and Chain Pier at Brighton,” and smaller 
landscapes of “Hampstead Heath” and “A Water Mill at 
Gillingham, Dorset.”’ 

The next year (1828) opened well. In January Mrs. Constable 
gave birth to another son, named Lionel Bicknell; of two land- 
scapes by Constable, in the Academy, one, “Hampstead 
Heath,” was bought by Chantrey the sculptor, and the other, 
“Dedham Vale,’ was highly praised, and pronounced by the 
artist to be “‘perhaps my best”’; the grief of Mrs. Constable in 
losing her father was mitigated by learning that Mr. Bicknell 
had left her and her husband £20,000. 

“This I will settle on my wife and children” writes Constable 
to Fisher, “‘that I may do justice to his good opinion of me. It 
will make me happy, and I shall stand before a six-foot canvas 
with a mind at ease, thank God !” 

This letter is particularly interesting, because in it Constable 
gives some account of the current exhibition at the Academy, 
alluding particularly to the work of his great rival: ““Turner has 
some golden visions, glorious and beautiful; they are only visions, 
but still they are art, and onecould live and die withsuch pictures.” 

For the rest, Constable thought : “The exhibition is poor; 
but though the talent is small, its produce in money has been 
very great; {150 per diem, perhaps, on an average.’”’ These 
satisfactory takings for entrance-fees and catalogues were 
evidently not affected by the presence of “‘Some portraits that 
would petrify you,” as Constable remarked to Fisher. 

But, alas, at the moment when the artist was congratulating 


THE MIDDLE YEARS 59 


himself that his mind could now be at ease, fresh troubles were 
brewing ! In the spring he had been called to Flatford by the 
serious illness of his brother, Abram Constable, and from 
Flatford he was recalled to London by the illness of his wife, 
who never really got over her last confinement. Constable took 
her to Brighton in the early summer, and when she returned to 
Hampstead in August he was cheered because “‘her cough is 
pretty well gone,”’ though anxious because she was still ‘“‘sadly 
thin and weak.’’ But though Constable tried to believe his wife 
was getting stronger, and friends tried to confirm him in his 
belief, she was getting worse and worse. What lay underneath 
the “cough”’ was pulmonary consumption. At last, Constable 
could no longer deceive himself, but though he “appeared in 
his usual spirits’? while he was in his wife’s presence, Leslie 
tells us one November day how, ‘“‘before I left the house, he 
(Constable) took me into another room, wrung my hand, and 
burst into tears, without speaking.”? Mrs. Constable died on 
November 23rd that year, and her husband never wholly 
recovered from the blow of her loss. 

By one of life’s little ironies, the official acknowledgment of 
Constable’s talent came swiftly now he was deprived of the 
partner of his joys and sorrows. On February 10, 1829, 
Constable was elected an Academician. That this well-merited 
distinction should have arrived so late is, as Leslie has said, 
‘“‘a proof that the progress of an original style of art, in the 
estimation even of artists, is very slow.’’ Constable himself, 
though naturally pleased at his election, also felt that it was too 
late, and could not help saying: “It has been delayed until 
I am solitary, and cannot impart it.” 


CHAPTER III 


Last YEARS 


MONG the many who hastened to condole with 
A Constable on the loss of his wife was his old friend 

Archdeacon Fisher, whose advice was as follows: 
‘“‘For your comfort, during the trial upon you for the exercise 
of your patience, you should apply yourself rigidly to your 
profession. Some of the finest works of art, and most vigorous 
exertions of intellect, have been the result of periods of distress. 
Poor Wilson painted all his finest landscapes under the pressure 
_ of sorrow.” Perhaps this advice was as good as any that could 
be given to the sorrowing widower, but, however well-inten- 
tioned, one suspects its accuracy. In the case of Richard Wilson 
in particular we know that penury restricted his production of 
paintings, and his finest landscapes were probably painted in 
the brighter intervals of his sad career. 

To say that Constable produced all his best paintings before 
his wife’s death would certainly be rash, but it can confidently 
be asserted that never afterwards did he do more than equal 
what he had done before. Now that he was relieved of all 
financial anxiety, he was hampered by other troubles; he was 
apt to be depressed in spirits and, as the years went on, his 
health suffered, rheumatism attacked him from time to time, 
and once for three weeks he was unable to hold a brush in his 
hand. Nevertheless, in the main he followed Fisher’s advice 


and sought to forget his sorrow in work. 
60 


LAST YEARS 61 


Early in 1829 he commenced a great project, namely, the 
publication of an engraved record of characteristic examples of 
his landscape. In this undertaking he was fortunate in securing 
the co-operation of an engraver, David Lucas, who in his own 
way was as great a genius as Constable himself. Sir C. J. 
Holmes, the present Director of the National Gallery, has not 
hesitated to assert that Lucas’s plates of ‘Mr. Constable’s 
English Landscape” form ‘‘the most magnificent series of 
landscape mezzotints ever produced.” Greatly as we admire 
the hand of Lucas, who executed these engravings, we shall do 
well to remember that this hand was constantly under the 
control of the master-painter himself. During the preparation 
and engraving of each plate Constable was in constant com- 
munication with Lucas, supervising the work, discussing difh- 
culties, and suggesting improvements. Never before in the 
history of art had painter and engraver worked together in such 
close and friendly intimacy; each had regard and respect for 
the other, and though it soon appeared doubtful whether the 
enterprise was likely to be successful financially, both men 
persevered to the end to attain perfection. 

Begun in 1829, the “English Landscape’”’ series was published 
in five parts, the last appearing in 1833. ‘The price of the 
complete set was only five guineas. In a prospectus the object 
of the series was set out as follows: “It is the desire of the 
Author in this publication to increase the interest for, and 
promote the study of the rural scenery of England, with all its 
endearing associations, and even in its most simple localities ; 
of England with her climate of more than vernal freshness, in 
whose summer skies and rich autumnal clouds, ‘in thousand 


62 JOHN CONSTABLE 


liveries dight,’ the observer of Nature may daily watch her 
endless varieties of effect.” 

We need not question the sincerity of Constable’s desire for 
a more general appreciation of the beauty of England’s rural 
scenery, if we surmise that he also had another object in view 
in publishing the series. He was well aware of the purblindness 
of his own generation as regards Nature, and of its prejudice 
against his own ‘‘natural” landscape, and he no doubt hoped 
that these engravings would help the public to understand 
better and enjoy more fully his paintings. In the preface to the 
publication he stated the case for his own style with moderation 
and dignity. 

“In art,” he wrote, ‘‘there are two modes by which men aim 
at distinction. In the one, by a careful application to what 
others have accomplished, the artist imitates their works, or 
selects and combines their various beauties; in the other, he 
seeks excellence at its primitive source, Nature. In the first, he 
forms a style upon the study of pictures, and produces either 
imitative or eclectic art; in the second, by a close observation 
of Nature, he discovers qualities existing in her which have 
never been portrayed before, and thus forms a style which is 
original. ‘The results of the one mode, as they repeat that with 
which the eye is already familiar, are soon recognized and 
estimated, while the advances of the artist in a new path must 
necessarily be slow, for few are able to judge of that which 
deviates from the usual course, or are qualified to appreciate 
original studies.”’ 

The first plate engraved was ‘‘Dedham Mill,” made from a 
slight sketch, but never again did Constable put anything but 


LAST YEARS 63 


a finished work in Lucas’s hands. Indeed, the selection of the 
subjects gave the painter as much anxiety as the progress of the 
engraving, and as an example of his fastidiousness and exacting 
care in this respect it may be mentioned that, chiefly on this 
account, he rejected five plates that Lucas had finished. 

In its complete form, as published in 1833, the “English 
Landscape”’ consisted of twenty-two plates with a frontispiece, 
“House and Grounds of the late Golding Constable, Esq., 
East Bergholt, Suffolk.” ‘Twelve of the plates are Suffolk 
landscapes, three show scenes at Hampstead, while among the 
remainder are views of Weymouth Bay, Yarmouth, Brighton, 
Old Sarum, Hadleigh Castle, and Redhill. There should have 
been a greater number of plates, but the work was interrupted 
first by the illness of Constable, then by the illness of Mrs. 
Lucas and one of her children, and the circumstances which 
eventually curtailed the enterprise are revealed only too plainly 
in a letter from the painter to Lucas dated March 12, 1831. 

“IT have thought much on my book,” writes Constable, ‘‘and 
all my reflections on the subject go to oppress me; its duration, 
its expense, its hopelessness of remuneration, added to which, 
I now discover that the printsellers are watching it as their 
lawful prey, and they alone can help me. I can only dispose of 
it by giving it away. My plan is to confine the number of plates 
to those now on hand; I see we have about twenty. The three 
present numbers contain twelve; others begun are about eight 
or ten more, some of which may not be resumed, and we must 
begin the frontispiece. It harasses my days, and disturbs my 
rest at nights. The expense is too enormous for a work that 
has nothing but your beautiful feeling and execution to 


BOAT-BUILDING, NEAR FLATFORD MILL 
Painted 1815 
In the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington 








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LAST YEARS 67 





recommend it. The painter himself is totally unpopular, and ever 
will be on this side the grave; the subjects nothing but the art, 
and the buyers wholly ignorant of that. . . . Years must roll 
on to produce the twenty-six prints, and all this time I shall not 
sell a copy. Remember, dear Lucas, I mean not, nor think one 
reflection on you. Everything, with the plan, is my own, and 
I want to relieve my mind of that which harasses it like a 
disease. Do not for a moment think I blame you, or that I do 
not sympathize with you in those lamentable causes of hind- 
rance which have afflicted your home. Pray, let me see you 
soon. I am not wholly unable to work, thank God! I hope 
poor Mrs. Lucas is better. Dr. Davis has been to see me and 
my poor boy John, who is very ill.”’ 

In this pathetic letter the real tragedy of Constable’s life is 
brought home to us, though the artist never regarded himself 
as a tragic figure and, looking backwards in his latter days, 
declared that his life had been “happy, but unpropitious.”’ 
There was no bitterness in him, but only a deep melancholy 
because “‘the painter himself is totally unpopular.”’ Unfor- 
tunately, it was true; during his lifetime the landscapes of 
Constable not only failed to find favour with the public, but 
they were disliked by a great number of his brother artists. 
A proof of this was afforded once when Constable was on the 
Council of the Royal Academy. His picture “‘Stream bordered 
with Willows’’—now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and 
entitled ‘““Water Meadows near Salisbury’’—accidentally got 
separated from his other pictures for the Academy, and, having 
been put with pictures by ‘‘outsiders,” was in its turn brought 
before the jury. Constable said nothing during a discussion at 


E 


68 JOHN CONSTABLE 


the end of which the picture was rejected, but just as it was 
being taken out some person noticed the signature of the 
artist, ““John Constable.’ Profuse apologies followed and the 
other members of the jury wanted the picture brought back, 
but now Constable intervened and forbade its retention. His 
picture had been openly condemned, and he would not permit 
it to be exhibited in the Academy. 

Though hampered by failing health during the four years in 
which so much of his time and energy had been poured into 
the task of preparing the “English Landscape”’ for publication, © 
the artist contrived none the less to keep up his output of 
paintings and to send regularly to the Academy. His exhibits 
in 1830 were ‘“‘Dell in Helmingham Park,” “A View of Hamp- 
stead Heath,” and another small landscape; in 1831 he sent a 
large picture of “Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows” and 
a smaller one of ““Yarmouth Pier.’’ Constable had taken parti- 
cular pains with his Salisbury picture; it was a subject which 
occupied his attention for some years, and he told his friend 
William Purton, of Hampstead, once that he hoped to make it 
his “best picture.” Though less decorative, perhaps, than the 
““Bishop’s Garden”’ view, it is a grand and stately work, as all 
who have seen it will agree, but at the Academy it was only a 
partial success. It was pronounced to be “‘chaotic,” and it was 
a poor consolation that, after roundly abusing it, a critic should 
be forced in the end to admit “It is still a picture from which 
it is impossible to turn without admiration.” 

That even now the great landscape painter was exposed to 
the criticism of all and sundry is most amusingly exemplified 
by an incident which occurred this August and is related as 


LAST YEARS | 69 


follows to his friend Leslie: ‘‘Varley, the astrologer, has just 
called on me; and I have bought a little drawing of him. He 
told me how to ‘do landscape,’ and was so kind as to point out 
all my defects. The price of the drawing was ‘a guinea and a 
half to a gentleman, and a guinea only to an artist,’ but I insisted 
on his taking the larger sum, as he had clearly proved to me 
that I was no artist.” 

Constable certainly suffered fools gladly, and his extra- 
ordinary gentleness, forbearance, and good humour are well 
illustrated by his generous behaviour towards this officious 
charlatan. 

On September 9g the artist saw the Coronation, a sight which 
roused all his loyalty to the throne : “‘I was in the Abbey eleven 
hours, and saw with my own eyes the crown of England put 
on the head of that good man, William IV, and that, too, in the 
chair of a saint! I saw also the gentle Adelaide crowned, and 
I trust, what may now be called the better half of England’s 
crown has sought its own wearer in this instance. . . . I sat so 
that I commanded a view of all the peers placed in raised ranks 
in the south transept. ‘The moment the King’s crown was on, 
they all crowned themselves. At the same instant the shouts of | 
“God save the King,’ the trumpets, the band, the drums of 
the soldiers in the nave, and last, though not least, the artillery, 
which could be distinguished amid all this din, and the jar 
even felt, made it eminently imposing. ‘The white ermine of 
the peers looked lovely in the sun; I shall sketch some. of the 
effects; the tone of the walls was sublime, heightened, no 
doubt, by the trappings, like an old picture in a newly gilt 
frame.” 


70 JOHN CONSTABLE 


Politics, so far as we know, had hitherto had little interest 
for Constable, but this autumn he became quite worried and 
alarmed about the progress of the Reform Bill. It is not sur- 
prising, perhaps, that the “totally unpopular”’ painter should 
have had little confidence in the judgment of the masses, but 
it is remarkable that, with his experience, he should have had 
more faith in the wisdom of the nobility. 

‘“‘What makes me dread this tremendous attack on the con- 
stitution of the country,” he writes to Leslie, “is, that the 
wisest and best of the Lords are seriously and firmly objecting 
to it; and it goes to give the government into the hands of the 
rabble and dregs of the people, and the devil’s agents on earth, 
the agitators. Do you think that the Duke of Wellington, the 
Archbishop of Canterbury, and Copley, and Eldon, and Abbot, 
and all the wisest and best men we have, would oppose it if it 
was to do good to the country? I do not. No Whig Govern- 
ment ever can do good to this peculiar country.” 

From which we may gather that Constable was a stanch old 
Tory at heart, though it is more than likely that this outburst 
was not so much the result of his concern with politics as a 
symptom that he was in ill-health and low spirits. For later on 
in the following month, November, he informs Leslie : “I am 
now, perhaps, quite well, and I can give you no greater proof 
of it than by telling you that the Reform Bill now gives me not 
the least concern. I care nothing about it, and have no curiosity 
to know whether it be dead or alive, or, if dead, whether it will 
revive from its ashes.”’ 

In December the artist was disabled by acute rheumatism 
—“my left side and arm prevented my working by pain and 


LAST YEARS 71 





helplessness’ —but he kept cheerful and rejoiced to Leslie: 
“Thank God, this right hand is left me entire.” January, 1832, 
found the artist still in bed, but, notwithstanding his ill-health, 
he managed this spring to complete and exhibit at the Academy 
his big picture, ““he Opening of Waterloo Bridge,”’ upon which 
he had been working for so many years. It certainly gave him 
more trouble than any other picture; not only had he con- 
tinually altered and repainted the big picture, but he had made 
innumerable studies for it—a sketch and a small painting of 
this subject can be seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum. 
Yet in the end the picture was not considered a success. Even 
Leslie calls it “a glorious failure,’ and states his belief that in 
this picture Constable “‘had indulged in the vagaries of the 
palette-knife (which he used with great dexterity) to an excess.” 
Constable had laid on the pigment freely with his palette-knife 
in order to attain brilliance of colour, but this method compelled 
a sacrifice of detail which, as Leslie says, “too much offended 
those who were unable to see the look of Nature it gave at the 
proper distance.’’ Even the painter’s brother artist and friend 
Stothard “‘shook his head and said : ‘Very unfinished, sir.’ ” 
Constable’s ‘‘Waterloo Bridge” is what we should to-day call 
an impressionist picture; not a detailed inventory of the scene, 
but a general impression of its colour and movement; and 
after all his apologies for it, Leslie stoutly maintained that 
“the noonday splendour of its colour would make almost any 
work of Canaletto, if placed beside it, look like moonlight.” 
The roughness of its surface, due to the use of the palette- 
knife, also disturbed many people, and it is supposed that it 
was after hearing some of the criticisms passed on this work 


72 JOHN CONSTABLE 


that the artist wrote the famous passage, found on a scrap of 
paper among his memoranda, ‘‘My art flatters nobody by 
imitation, it courts nobody by smoothness, it tickles nobody by 
petiteness, it is without either fal-de-lal or fiddle-de-dee; how, 
then, can I hope to be popular ?”’ 

Constable himself was always uncertain about the success of 
his ““Opening of Waterloo Bridge,” to which he once jocularly 
alluded as his “Lord Mayor’s Show.” Eventually he would not 
allow it to be engraved, telling Lucas it was “‘too good a joke 
to be received into our church. Nothing can make it either 
apostolic or canonical, so uncongenial 1s any part of this hideous 
Gomorrah.” Since 1819, when it had first entered into his 


head to paint this subject, he had again and again taken it up 


only to lay it aside, doubting and doubtful, and he was thinking 
about it off and on for thirteen years before he got it finished. 
It is not to be wondered at if during this lengthy period his 
first enthusiasm for it became cool and his original zest grew — 
stale. Leslie probably penetrated to the heart of the matter 
when he commented : “The expanse of sky and water tempted 
him to go on with it, while the absence of all rural associations 
made it distasteful to him; and when at last it came forth, 
though possessing very high qualities—composition, breadth, 
and brightness of colour—it wanted one which generally con- 
stituted the greatest charm of his pictures—sentiment—and it 
was condemned by the public; though perhaps less for a 
deficiency which its subject occasioned than for its want of 
finish.”’ | 

An amusing story of Turner is told in connexion with this 
picture. It appears that in the course of the arrangement of 


LAST YEARS 73 


the exhibition at Somerset House, “The Opening of Waterloo 
Bridge’’ was placed near a seapiece by Turner—‘“‘a singularly 
beautiful, grey picture, devoid of any positive colour.’’ One 
day, whilst Constable was adding further colour to the flags 
and other decorations of the City barges, Turner came into the 
room repeatedly. Standing behind Constable, he looked from 
one painting to the other. Presently he fetched his palette and 
placed, on his own grey sea, a round spot of red lead rather 
larger than a shilling. The red lead was so brilliant, so con- 
spicuous on the surrounding grey, that even Constable’s colours 
paled by comparison. When Turner had left the room, Leslie 
entered it. Constable remarked : ‘He has been here and fired 
a gun.” Near by, on the opposite wall, hung the ‘“Shadrach, 
Meshach, and Abednego” of George Jones. Said Abraham 
Cooper : “A coal has bounced across the room from Jones’s 
picture and set fire to Turner’s sea.” “The great man,’ adds 
Leslie, ““did not come into the room again for a day and a half; 
and then, in the last moments that were allowed for painting, 
he glazed the scarlet seal he had put upon his picture, and 
shaped it into a buoy.” 

Hardly had Constable recovered his own health that summer 
than his eldest daughter became alarmingly ill with scarlet 
fever. During June her position was extremely critical, but in 
July she got better and was able to go away to Brighton. More 
trials, however, were in store for him. In August his “dear 
friend’’ Archdeacon Fisher died suddenly at Boulogne, whither 
he had gone with Mrs. Fisher to recuperate after a long illness. 
“This sudden and awful event has strongly affected me,” 
wrote Constable to Leslie. ‘The closest intimacy had subsisted 


74 JOHN CONSTABLE 


between us for many years; we loved each other, and confided 
in each other entirely, and his loss makes a sad gap in my 
worldly prospects. He would have helped my children, for he 
was a good adviser, though impetuous, and he was a truly 
religious man. I cannot tell you how singularly his death has 
affected me.”’ 

All this summer, too, Constable had been very worried about 
John Dunthorne, junior. This son of his old Suffolk friend 
had come to London and was for many years Constable’s 
assistant, afterwards developing into a skilful picture-cleaner, 
whom Constable had much aided and helped to find employ- 
ment. The poor fellow grew gradually worse during the 
autumn, and finally died. Constable went down to Suffolk for 
the funeral, and wrote sadly to Lucas: “I returned last night 
after seeing the last of poor John; no one can supply his place 
with me.”” On the return journey, however, an incident occurred 
which must have cheered the painter considerably. “In the 
coach yesterday, coming from Suffolk,’ he writes, “were two 
gentlemen and myself, all strangers to each other. In passing 
the vale of Dedham, one of them remarked, on my saying it was 
beautiful, “Yes, sir, this is Constable’s country.’ I then told 
him who I was, lest he should spoil it.’’ His landscapes may 
not have been so popular as he could have wished, but Constable 
had his admirers, and it must have been gratifying thus to 
meet one unexpectedly. 

This December, Constable SHA himself and his family 
from Well Walk, Hampstead, back to Charlotte Street. “We 
are all looking round with astonishment,” he writes, “‘at having 
been so long away from so comfortable a house as this.” During 


LAST YEARS 75 


the early part of 1833 Constable began his picture of the 
cenotaph erected by Sir George Beaumont in his own grounds 
to the memory of Sir Joshua Reynolds, but he laid it aside in 
order to complete his fine oil-painting of “‘Englefield House, 
Berkshire : Morning,’ commissioned by the owner of the house, 
Mr. Benyon de Beauvoir. This picture was considered a success, 
and found much favour at the Academy, where it was exhibited 
together with “A Cottage in a Cornfield,” “Landscape : Sun- 
set,” “A Heath,” “Showery Noon,” and three water-colours. 
But though others praised him rather more than usual, the 
painter himself seems to have been dissatisfied, for, writing to 
a friend about the exhibition, after mentioning Wilkie, Leslie, 
Phillips, Landseer, and Shee, he says : “Constable is weak this 
year.’ This letter was written to a Mr. George Constable; no 
relation of the painter, with whom John Constable got very 
friendly in his last years. 

A good retort was made by the painter to a captious critic 
who said the “‘Englefield’”’ picture was ‘‘only a picture of a 
house, and ought to have been put in the Architectural Room.” 
Constable replied: “It is a picture of a summer morning, 
including a house.” 

During this summer Constable gave at Hampstead his first 
public lecture, his subject being ‘“‘An Outline of the History of 
Landscape Painting.” It was not written out, and so was never 
published, but was delivered from notes, some of which have 
been preserved by Leslie. From these it would appear that 
after giving a review of this branch of the art from classical 
times, the chief point made by the lecturer was that after the 
death of the great Dutch painters, Rembrandt, Ruysdael, 


76 JOHN CONSTABLE 


Cuyp, etc., “landscape rapidly declined, and during almost the 
whole of the succeeding century little was produced beyond 
mannered and feeble imitations of their art—the painters of 
this period adding nothing to the general stock, as their pre- 
decessors had done by original study, but referring always to . 
the pictures of their masters instead of looking to the aspects 
of Nature which had given birth to those pictures. From this 
degraded and fallen state it is delightful to say that landscape 
painting revived in our own country, in all its purity, simplicity 
and grandeur, in the works of Wilson, Gainsborough, Cozens, 
and Girtin.”’ | 

Early in 1834 both Constable and his eldest son John, who 
were now back again at Well Walk, Hampstead, were ill with — 
rheumatic fever. The painter had a long and severe attack, 
lasting for the greater part of two months, and accompanied 
by severe pain. His friend and medical attendant, Mr. Evans, 
writing to Mr. William Purton, another of Constable’s friends 
at Hampstead, at a much later date testified : “These sufferings 
he bore with great patience for one of so sensitive a frame; 
and on the occasion of my visits to him, his cheerfulness was 
generally restored, and his conversation was of the same 
delightful character which you know so well. . . . I think he 
was never so well after this severe illness; its effects were felt 
by him, and showed themselves in his looks ever afterwards; 
so that I think it may be said to have had some share in his 
removal from us.” 

Owing to this long illness Constable was unable to send any 
oil-painting to the Academy this year, where he was repre- 
sented only by five drawings, among them being water-colours 


LAST YEARS oy 


of ‘The Mound of the City of Old Sarum” and “Stoke Poges 
Church, the Scene of Gray’s ‘Elegy.’ ” In July the painter was 
able to pay a visit with his son to his friend George Constable 
at Arundel, with the scenery of which he was delighted. ‘The 
castle is the chief ornament of this place,’ he tells Leslie; 
‘put all here sinks to insignificance in comparison with the 
woods and hills. The woods hang from steeps and precipices, 
and the trees are beyond everything beautiful.”’ In September 
he visited Lord Egremont at Petworth, where he spent a fort- 
night and “‘filled a large book with sketches in pencil and water- 
colours.’’ Back in London in the October, he set to work again 
on “Salisbury from the Meadows.” ‘This, according to Leslie, 
“was a picture which he felt would probably in future be 
considered his greatest; for if among his smaller works there 
were many of more perfection of finish, this he considered as 
conveying the fullest impression of the compass of his art. 
But it met with no purchaser.” | 
In the following April the artist wrote a delightful letter to 
his friend George Constable, who had invited the artist’s son 
John to accompany him on a trip to France. ‘This invitation it 
was impossible to accept because, as his father explained, 
young John was now extremely busy studying as a medical 
student at London University and attending lectures on 
chemistry, anatomy, etc. He then continues : “Having spoken 
of the young chymist and surgeon, let me speak of the old 
landscape painter. I have got my picture into a very beautiful 
state; I have kept my brightness without my spottiness, and I 
have preserved God Almighty’s daylight, which is enjoyed by 
all mankind, excepting only the lovers of dirty old canvas, 


78 JOHN CONSTABLE | 


perished pictures at a thousand guineas each, cart grease, tar, 
and snuff of candle.” 

The picture to which the artist here alludes was a “View of 
Willy Lott’s House,” better known as “The Valley Farm”’ (see 
illustration), now hanging in the Tate Gallery. This beau- 
tiful work was painted from an early sketch, and it was the 
only picture Constable sent to the Academy of 1835. To use a 
modern term, it had a “‘better Press’ than any picture Constable 
had previously exhibited there, and was bought before the 
exhibition opened by Mr. Robert Vernon. Always a most — 
popular work, a typical and characteristic example of the 
artist’s later manner, “The Valley Farm” is especially to be 
admired for its effective arrangement of the masses. While the ~ 
scene appears absolutely natural, the design closely follows the 
diagonal line of an orthodox classic composition. There is a 
triangle of dark, with a little light in it, on the lower and right- 
hand side; and a triangle of light, with a few darks in it, on the 
upper left-hand side. ‘The house itself, in the centre of the 
canvas, lies between these two triangles, contributing light to 
the dark, and dark to the light section. The farm, however, is 
not the dominant note in the picture; more important are the 
tall trees which overshadow it, beneath which a man with a 
punting-pole is pushing off a boat into midstream; and equally 
important is the great expanse of luminous, cloud-laden sky. 
Very beautiful and subtle throughout is the play of light among 
the trees, upon the water, on the house itself, and on the shirt- 
sleeves of the man poling; it is a network of light and shade, 
embroidered into an exquisitely balanced composition, full of 
art, yet with a simplicity that rivals Nature herself. 


LAST YEARS 79 


This summer Constable gave his second lecture on landscape 
at Hampstead, and though no notes of it have been preserved, 
it seems probable that in it he alluded in the highest terms to 
John Cozens, for shortly before the lecture, in a letter to a 
friend, he writes enthusiastically of Cozens as “‘the greatest 
genius that ever touched landscape.” 

In the autumn Constable visited Worcester, where, by special 
invitation, he delivered lectures on October 6th, 7th, and 8th. 
Back in London in November, he decided not to begin a big 
picture this year, characteristically telling George Constable 
“fa size smaller will be better, and more of them; such as will 
suit my friends’ pockets; though ’tis too late in life for me to 
think of ever becoming a popular painter. Besides, a know- 
ledge of the world, and I have little of it, goes farther towards 
that than a knowledge of art.”’ 

In 1836 the Royal Academy was to hold its last exhibition in 
Somerset House previous to its removal to new quarters, and 
that spring Constable put all his other paintings aside in order 
to finish in time for the exhibition his picture of “The Ceno- 
taph.”’ He had been working earlier in the year on a painting 
of ‘Arundel Mill and Castle,” but, as he told George Constable, 
“TI found I could not do both, and so I preferred to see Sir 
Joshua Reynolds’s name and Sir George Beaumont’s once more 
in the catalogue, for the last time at the old house.” 

In describing ‘“The Cenotaph” in the catalogue, Constable 
quoted the lines inscribed on it, written by Wordsworth at 
Sir George Beaumont’s request :— 

“Ye Lime-trees ranged before this hallowed Urn, 
Shoot forth with lively power at Spring’s return; 


80 JOHN CONSTABLE 





And be not slow a stately growth to rear 

Of pillars, branching off from year to year, 

Till they have learn’d to frame a darksome aisle ;— 
That may recall to mind that awful Pile 

Where Reynolds, ’mid our country’s noblest dead, 
In the last sanctity of fame is laid. 


‘“‘ There, though by right the excelling Painter sleep 
Where Death and Glory a joint Sabbath keep, 
Yet not the less his Spirit would hold dear 
Self-hidden praise, and Friendship’s private tear: 
Hence, on my patrimonial grounds, have I 
Raised this frail tribute to his memory; 

From youth a zealous follower of the Art 

That he professed, attached to him in heart; 
Admiring, loving, and with grief and pride, 
Feeling what England lost when Reynolds died.” 


“The Cenotaph” is unique among all Constable’s paintings. 
One might think he had the prejudices of his old friend and 
patron in mind when he presented this aspect of Sir George’s 
park as a brown landscape. The autumnal tints of the foliage, 
however, were the natural result of Constable having made his 
studies on the spot late in the autumn; it was by deliberate 
choice, on the other hand, that he took the afternoon as his 
time of day. Both these things were very unusual with 
Constable, though it must be admitted that the fall of the year 
and the wane of day were peculiarly appropriate to the signi- 
_ ficance of the picture. Another unusual thing for a Constable 
landscape is the absence in this picture of any vestige of human 


LAST YEARS Br 


life. Apart from the deer in the foreground and a robin- 
redbreast perched on a corner of the monument, there is no 
living thing in the landscape, which is impressive, almost awe- 
inspiring, in its solitude, and is impregnated with a deep feeling 
of resigned sadness without parallel in the art of Constable. 
For in all his other works, whether sketches or large or small 
paintings, Constable is essentially a cheerful painter. There is 
a touch of solemnity in his Salisbury pictures, in his view of 
“Old Sarum,” but none of these equal the solemnity of ““The 
Cenotaph.” Richly painted with loaded pigment, the picture 
has that glittering effect so characteristic of Constable and so 
offensive to many of his contemporaries, though the trees, 
partly denuded of their leaves, permit the perfection of his 
drawing of boughs to be seen more plainly than in any other 
of his pictures. 

“The Cenotaph” was Constable’s last great picture, and to 
the superstitiously minded there seems to be something almost 
uncanny in the coincidence that in the evening of his days he 
should have departed so far from his usual practice and, turning 
aside from noonday splendour and the full foliage of summer, 
have uttered as his swan-song this sonorous tribute to the 
moving majesty of the yellow leaf. 

On Thursday, May 26th, and on the following three Thurs- 
days at 3 p.m. Constable delivered four lectures at the Royal 
Institution in Albemarle Street on “‘The History of Landscape 
Painting.” Of the notes of these lectures, which Leslie has 
preserved, the following passages are particularly significant, 
and helpful to the understanding of the painter’s mind and art : 

‘The attempt to revive styles that have existed in former ages 





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LAST YEARS 8c 


may for a time appear to be successful, but experience may now 
surely teach us its impossibility. I might put on a suit of Claude 
Lorraine’s clothes and walk into the street, and the many who 
know Claude but slightly would pull off their hats to me, but 
I should at last meet with some one more intimately acquainted 
with him, who would expose me to the contempt I merited... . 

“The young painter who, regardless of present popularity, 
would leave a name behind him must become the patient pupil 
of Nature. If we refer to the lives of all who have distinguished 
themselves in art or science, we shall find they have always been 
laborious. The landscape painter must walk in the fields with 
a humble mind. No arrogant man was ever permitted to see 
Nature in all her beauty... . 

“Paley observed of himself, that ‘the happiest hours of a 
sufficiently happy life were passed by the side of a stream’; 
and I am greatly mistaken if every landscape painter will not 
acknowledge that his most serene hours have been spent in the 
open air, with his palette on his hand.” 

In the autumn of 1836 Constable was much occupied with 
his children; John, the eldest, was preparing for Cambridge, 
and Charles, his second son, who had adopted the sea as his 
profession, was on leave prior to sailing in an East Indiaman. 
Early in the New Year he resumed working on “Arundel Mill 
and Castle,” a subject, as he told Mr. George Constable in a 
letter dated February 17, 1837, “for which I am indebted to 
your friendship. It is, and shall be, my best picture; the size, 
three or four feet; it is safe for the Exhibition, as we have as 
much as six weeks good.” 

Alas ! “‘Man proposes . . .” The picture was never finished, 


F 


86 JOHN CONSTABLE 


though Lucas subsequently executed an engraving from it for 
his second series of mezzotints, and ‘“‘Arundel Mill and Castle”’ 
was considered to be sufficiently far advanced to be exhibited 
in the Academy after the painter’s death. 

His faithful friend and biographer, C. R. Leslie, saw Constable 
for the last time on ‘Thursday, March 30th, when both attended 
a general assembly of the Academy and afterwards walked part 
of the way home together. ‘The night, though very cold, was 
fine,’ says Leslie, and he recalls an incident of the walk which 
throws its own light on Constable’s character: “‘As we pro- 
ceeded along Oxford Street, he heard a child cry on the opposite 
side of the way; the griefs of childhood never failed to arrest 
his attention, and he crossed over to a little beggar-girl who had 
hurt her knee; he gave her a shilling and some kind words, 
which, by stopping her tears, showed that the hurt was not very 
serious, and we continued our walk.” 

All the next day he stayed in, busily engaged on his picture 
of “Arundel Mill and Castle,” but in the evening he went out 
on a charitable mission connected with the Artists’ Benevolent 
Fund. | 

“He returned about nine o’clock, ate a hearty supper, and, 
feeling chilly, had his bed warmed : a luxury he rarely indulged 
in. It was his custom to read in bed; between ten and eleven 
he had read himself to sleep, and his candle, as usual, was 
removed by a servant. Soon after this, his eldest son, who had 
been at the theatre, returned home, and while preparing for 
bed in the next room, his father awoke in great pain and called 
to him. So little was Constable alarmed, however, that he at 
first refused to send for medical assistance; he took some 


LAST YEARS | 87 


rhubarb and magnesia, which produced sickness, and he drank 
copiously of warm water, which occasioned vomiting; but the 
pain increasing, he desired that Mr. Michele, his near neighbour, 
should be sent for, who very soon attended. In the meantime, 
Constable had fainted, his son supposing he had fallen asleep; 
Mr. Michele instantly ordered some brandy to be brought; the 
bedroom of the patient was at the top of the house; the servant 
had to run downstairs for it, and before it could be procured, 
life was extinct, and within half an hour of the first attack 
of pain.” 

Thus Leslie chronicles the end of the friend and master he 
revered. A post-mortem, conducted by Professor Partridge in 
the presence of Mr. Michele and Mr. George Young, revealed 
the strange fact that Constable’s death was due to acute indi- 
gestion; no traces of disease could be discovered sufficient to 
produce a fatal result. Mr. Michele was of opinion afterwards 
that the prompt application of a stimulant might have saved 
his patient’s life. The great painter was laid to rest in the 
churchyard at Hampstead, a place he loved dearly, and ten 
years earlier, on first moving into his house there, he had 
written to Fisher, “‘I could gladly exclaim, here let me take my 
everlasting rest.” 


CHAPTER IV 


WorRK AND INFLUENCE 


a part of his life in defending the art of J. M. W. Turner, 

should have been singularly blind to the genius of John 
Constable. One would have thought that the trees in “The 
Cenotaph” alone might have restrained the critic from rashly 
asserting “I have never seen any work of his in which there 
were any signs of his being able to draw, and hence even the 
most necessary details are painted by him inefficiently.” In 
fairness to the writer, we ought to remember that this passage 
in his ‘‘Modern Painters”’ was published soon after Constable’s 
death, when a vast number of Constable’s paintings and 
sketches, with which we are familiar, were in private hands, 
and had probably not been seen by Ruskin. We may attribute 
his sweeping and quite unjustifiable condemnation, therefore, 
not merely to prejudice, but also to ignorance. ‘To look at such 
a picture as ‘“T'rees near Hampstead Church’”’ (see illustration) is 
surely to have any doubts as to the artist’s ability to draw 
resolved at once, and in the Victoria and Albert Museum there 
are more than a dozen tree studies which prove that Constable 
had as searching an eye for form as for colour. In this brief 
survey of the life and work of the great landscape painter it has 
only been possible to mention individually a few of his most 


important paintings, but it is a literal truth that many of 
88 


|: is a thousand pities that John Ruskin, who spent so large 


WORK AND INFLUENCE 89 





Constable’s slight sketches are, artistically, quite as important 
as any of his largest paintings, and of a certainty it can be said 
that nobody knows Constable who knows only his paintings, 
and not his sketches. Some of the most precious things he 
ever did are only about the size of the lid of a cigar-box. There 
are some beautiful little oil-sketches of this size in the Diploma 
Gallery at Burlington House; and, on the whole, it may be 
asserted that the colour in the sketches is fresher and has 
suffered less from the ravages of time than that in the larger 
paintings. It is partly for this reason, because they are fresher 
and because, inevitably, they are more spontaneous and easy, 
that many artists and many shrewd judges of painting have not 
hesitated to affirm that they prefer Constable’s sketches to his 
finished pictures. 

Constable’s insistence on his being a “‘natural’’ painter has 
led many of his admirers and imitators astray, for it has led 
them to believe that some of his most characteristic works are 
just “snapshots from Nature.” Undoubtedly Constable aimed 
at truth, all the truth that he could grasp and express, but he 
did not sacrifice all the many other qualities which a picture 
should possess to this one pursuit. His pictures indeed have 
the appearance of truth, but when examining more closely 
“The Leaping Horse’ and “The Valley Farm’ we have seen 
how carefully the parts have been arranged and ordered to form 
a harmonious and decorative whole. Much less than justice 
has been done to Constable as a designer, chiefly because he 
did not compel all Nature to fit into a preconceived geometrical 
arrangement, but extracted his designs from the manifold 
patterns which Nature herself affords to a diligent observer. 


90 JOHN CONSTABLE 


In his desire to give a true general impression of Nature, 
Constable was, within his limits, an impressionist; but in his 
day the scientific investigation of colour had not been carried 
so far as it was fifty years later, and the colour of shadows was 
not an inquiry which he pursued as did his successors, those 
great French painters of the nineteenth century known as the 
Impressionist School. It was the peculiar merit and glory of 
Constable that he searched out and stated fearlessly the colour 
in Nature’s lights; in this he was a true pioneer and pointed out 
the way to succeeding generations. Not only do the facts of 
history altogether justify the statement that “‘in England, the 
influence of Constable on his successors has been wider than 
that of any other English landscape painter’; we can go still 
further and say that Constable is one of the very few British 
artists who have attained to international rank and been a 
world influence. No other British painter—not even Turner 
himself—is more honoured to-day in France and on the Con- 
tinent generally than Constable. Talk to any Parisian artist 
about British painting and the name of John Constable will be 
the first to leap to his lips. ‘The influence of the Suffolk miller’s 
son first showed itself in Paris, and it has remained a potent 
force there ever since. : 

That the French Romanticists and Impressionists were both 
indebted to Constable is one of the commonplaces of art 
criticism, but my friend Mr. S. C. K. Smith, in his “Looking 
at Pictures,’’ has made some shrewd observations on a point in 
which the tormer differed from Constable. 

“Tf it is to France that we owe the first appreciation by 
artists of the work of Constable,” he writes, “‘it is because they 


WORK AND INFLUENCE gI 





grasped, not so much the love of Nature which inspired it, as 
the possibilities of landscape as a medium of individual expres- 
sion. For landscape has to them no marked personality of its 
own, and for that very reason can be treated by the artist as the 
unclouded mirror of his own personality, as he sees it himself. 
Constable talks to you about the joy of rain among the trees. 
The painters of the Barbizon School talk to you each about 
himself. ‘Their painting is not unconsciously, but consciously, 
temperamental. It is not so much himself, as his ideal of 
himself that the French painter puts into his picture, the 
abstract quality for which he feels the most sympathy.” 

In this there is much truth. Constable was different, his 
sympathies were given to the concrete rather than to the 
abstract, and for him not only was Suffolk Suffolk and Wiltshire 
Wiltshire, but every stump, stile, lane, and field in his beloved 
East Bergholt had a marked personality of its own. He was a 
painter who did not seek to save his own personality, and 
therefore did not lose it when he became absorbed in Nature. 
No painting is really more personal than his; we can all recog- 
nize the touch of Constable, but the expression of his own 
personality is unconscious, not deliberate. In his art, as in his 
life, John Constable was self-forgetful, and he became one of 
the greatest of the world’s landscape artists because he was one 
of the most disinterested of painters. 

The learned Director of the National Gallery has usefully 
reminded us that we must not press too far our claims con- 
cerning Constable’s influence on French painting, pointing out 
that in 1824 Rousseau, “the pioneer of landscape painting in 
France,’ was then only twelve years old, that Corot’s work 


92 JOHN CONSTABLE 


“retained its pleasant youthful stiffness for years after 
Constable’s death,” and that French painters in general would 
have had “‘nothing but the memory of a few works of Constable’s 
shown at the Salon to direct their sympathetic enthusiasm.” I 
am not sure but that Sir C. J. Holmes has under-estimated the 
number of Constable’s paintings which were to be seen in 
Paris during the early half of the last century, for we know 
from Leslie that several Frenchmen were among his patrons 
towards the latter end of his life, and it is possible that some of 
these pictures were known to and studied by the younger 
French landscape painters. Nevertheless, if it be true, as Sir 
C. J. Holmes asserts, that “it is as a tradition rather than as a 
reality that his influence has persisted,” this only amounts to 
saying that Constable’s attitude towards Nature has made an 
even greater impression on the world than his renderings of 
her scenery. ‘This indeed is tacitly admitted by the writer 
when he says that Constable’s connexion with the moderns 
‘“‘rests on the sincerity with which he looked at Nature, a 
sincerity which only a few years ago was commonly regarded as 
the one thing needful to great art. And of this sincerity 
Constable was the conspicuous champion. ‘Turner was sincere 
to himself rather than to Nature. Crome was sincere to Nature, 
but never allowed his sincerity to overrule his innate reverence 
for fine painting. Cox and De Wint were sincere, but their 
outlook was less wide, their truthfulness less unrelenting than 
Constable’s. So it has come about that Constable is generally 
held to be the father of modern landscape, both in France and 
England.” 

In this matter of paternity, however, we must not forget that 


WORK AND INFLUENCE 93 


before Constable there was Richard Wilson, whose art the later 
painter so greatly admired. In a letter dated 1823, Constable 
wrote : “I went to the gallery of Sir John Leicester to see the 
English artists. I recollect nothing so much as a large solemn, 
bright, warm, fresh landscape by Wilson, which still swims in 
my brain like a delicious dream. Poor Wilson. Think of his 
fate, think of his magnificence. ... He was one of those 
appointed to show the world the hidden stores and beauties 
of Nature.”’ 

But Wilson, whose art even to-day is underrated and much 
misunderstood, is known chiefly by his Italian landscapes, 
though he was really the first to show the world the supreme 
beauty of English scenery. No doubt Constable knew Wilson’s 
English landscapes and loved them, but somehow, though he 
was a real pioneer in this direction, attention always has been 
and still is directed to Wilson’s Italian subjects rather than to 
his English scenes. The very fact that he never painted outside 
his own homeland has contributed to make Constable pre- 
eminent as the painter of the English countryside. 

Again, it has been said that Constable’s “first desire was to 
reproduce God’s light in his work, and to give a true and full 
impression of Nature both in colour and chiaroscuro.”’ ‘This is 
true enough, but it is not true only of Constable. Wilson also 
aimed at giving Nature’s true colouring and was not afraid to 
portray her in her green livery, as all who know his ‘Thames 
at Twickenham” and “View near Oxford” will agree. Wilson 
also, and Claude before him, strived above all things to repro- 
duce “‘God’s light”’ in their pictures; but there is this profound 
difference in their lighting that, while with Claude and Wilson 


94 JOHN CONSTABLE 


light was something still, steady, and glowing, with Constable 
it was something alive, quivering, and vibrating. This was one 
of the supreme distinctions of his art, and Sir James D. Linton 
penetrated to one of the secrets of the painter when he empha- 
sized the fact that Constable “never failed to reproduce those 
exquisite flickering lights caused by the day sky which fall 
upon all objects in the open air.’’* 

Let us be quite candid. In the matter of formal dignity it 
may be maintained that Constable did not reach to the heights 
attained by Claude and by Wilson, but—largely thanks to the 
presence of those “‘exquisite flickering lights’’—his landscapes 
had another quality, an air of vivacity and vitality that had 
never before to the same degree been expressed in landscape 
painting. Before Constable the world had landscapes that were 
solemn, noble, dignified, and reposeful; but Constable was the 
founder of a new type of landscape that was not necessarily 
reposeful, but exhilarating and invigorating like the English 
breezes that swept across the meadows and through the foliage 
which he excelled in painting. Many painters have extracted 
art from life; Constable was one of the rare few who gave 
life to art. 


THE END 


* «© Constable’s Sketches,’’ by Sir James D. Linton. 


INDEX 


“A CoTTraceE”  ., 3 
mes | Cottage i in a Cornfield ” 36, 75 


. A Ferry” 30 

“ A Harvest- field with th Reapers and 
Gleaners ” Ben 
Pie fieath |’ 45 
* A Lock ” 29 
“A Scene in Cumberland ” 20 
“* A Scene on the River Stour” a7 
** A Shower ” : 38 
* A Study of Trees ” A$ 42 
** A View in Westmorland ” an 2e 
“A View of Hampstead Heath”.. 68 

“A View on the Stour, near Ded- 
ham ” 40 

© Water “Mill at Gillingham, 
Dorset ” a. 58 
“ A Wheatfield’? .. 4€ SPIE 
*““A Wood: Autumn” .. ones 4 
Abingdon, drawings of 40 
** Alchemist,” the .. 5 


Alexander, Emperor, in London . 31 
Allnutt, Mr. , landscape bought by 29, 30 
“An Outline of the History of 
Landscape Painting,” (lectures) 75, 79 
Art, topographical range of, limited 40 


, Arundel Mill and Castle ” 79, 85, 86 
Arundel, visit to : Heh kag, 
BARBIZON SCHOOL, The 48, gI 
Beaumont, Dowager Lady Dee 


Beaumont, Sir George, 3, 4, 42, 43, 75,79 
Beauvoir, Mr. Benyon de, commis- 


sion from. . 75 
Berkshire, visit to .. 39 
Bicknell, Charles, 21, 29, 32, 33, 35; 

death of, 58; legacy from, 58 
Bicknell, Maria, 23, 22, 23,:25,.29 

30, 31, 32, 335 34, 35; legacy to, 35 
Bicknell, Mrs., death of .. 32 
Birmingham, vi visit to aEeO 
Birth ; as ae I 
Blenheim, drawings of 40 


95 


PAGE 
ie Boat-building és 31 
“ Borrowdale ” 20 
* Bow Fell ” 20 
Brantham Church, altar-piece at I “rg, 20 
Bridgman, Rev. George (portrait) 25 
Brighton, engraving of, 63; family 
at, 49, 51 
British Gallery, the, exhibits at 29, 36 
Burial-place es coments? 
CARPENTER, Mr. James, landscape 
bought by 30 


Cecil Street, 23, residence at. 9 


Chantrey, Sir Francis mA cl.t: 
Character, lofty moral 2, 11, 69 
Charlotte Street, fire at, 24; return 

to, 74; studio at, 41, 58 
Children, 36, 37, 41, 42, 48, 49, 57, 

58, 85; fondness, 36; ill-health, 

51, 53, 67; incident, typical, 86 
“Christ blessing little Children” 15 
*‘ Christ healing the Sick ” hy est’s) 20 
Claude, influence of - 4, 42, 93, 94 
Clerical work ee oe 9 
Cloud movements, study of Be 3 
Colchester .. A, As ead 
Colour : 2 89, 90 
Constable, Abram .. 59 
Constable, George, letters to, 75, 

77, 79; Visit to, 77 
Constable, Golding, 1, 14; death of, 

333 legacy from, 37 
Constable, Mrs. (mother), 1, 4, 20, 

24; death of, 32 
Constable, Mrs. (wife), death of, 

59; illness of, 59 
** Constable’s Country ” 74 
“* Constable’s Sketches ” 94 
* Constable’s White Horse ” 37, 51, 52 
Cooper, Abraham .. ‘ 7s 
Correspondence, gaps in .. Tea 


Cox, sincerity of .. A ee ln Os 
Cozens, John 


INDEX 


PAGE 

Criticism, hostile 68 
Crome, sincerity of 92 
Cumberland, sketches made in 19 
Darsy, Mr. Francis 51 
Daubigny .. 48 
Dacehien eldest, illness of | 73 
Dawe, Mr., work for 32 
Deal, sea-trip to 14 
Death : 87 
Dedham... af r, ty 4 
“Dedham Lock ”’ 49, 53; six-foot 

sketch of, 49 
“ Dedham Mill ” cen Brayine) 62 
“Dedham Vale” .. 58 
Delacroix .. Spee 
“ Dell in Helmingham Park ” 68 
Designs : 89 
De Wint, ance of 92 
Diary 50 
** Diary of an ‘Invalid ” 43,47 
Diploma Gallery 49, 89 
Drawing-master, post of .. 12 
Dunthorne, John, friendship with 

2. letters TO,TOs 15 Les ter 
Dunthorne, John, junior, death of 74 
Dupré s ee 48 
EARNINGS : 29, 38 
East Bergholt, 1, 5, 13, 19, 2,24, 

31, 33, 36, 39, 40, 91 
Egremont, Lord .. oa | 
my Englefield House, Berkshire : 

Morning ”’ 75 


“ English Landscape ’ series, scope 


of . ; 61, 62, 63, 68 
Engravings, series of 61, 63, 86 
Estimate : 88 et seq. 


Etchings .. as As - 5 


Famity 38, 42, 48, 49, 51, 53, 57, 58 
Farington, Joseph, R.A., death of, 
41; diary of, 4, 5; friendship 
with, 4, 5, 9; introduction to, 4; 
position of, 4; studio of, 41; 
Turner and, 5 
Father of modern landscape 92 
Finances 25, 29, 34, 48, 51, 52 


96 


PAGE 
Fisher, Dr. John (Bishop), 12, 23, 
40; portrait of, 23 
Fisher, Rev. John (Archdeacon), 
231 25) 34, 35, 37s 38; 39, 40, 42, 
47, 48, 51, 52, 53, 58, 60, 87; 
death of, 73; portrait of, 36; 
tribute to, 73, 74 
Flatford Mill .. 1, 11, 3° ete 39 59 
 Flatford Mill” .. : 25 
French appreciation 48, 90, 9I 


French landscape painting, in- 
fluence upon 8 epeh ae 
GAINSBOROUGH, influence of .. 9 
Gentleness .. 69 
“* Gibeon’s Farm ” 39 
Girtin, influence of a De 4 
> God's ight? 7 aS 20 OR 
Grimwood, Rev. Dr. a ae I 
HADLEIGH CASTLE, engraving of . 63 


“‘ Hampstead Heath” .. 38 
Hampstead, landscapes of, 40, 58; 
lectures at, 75, 79; mezzotints, 


63; residences, 4) 41, ae 74> ie 


“* Harrow ” 38 
Head, a, price for®*; 29 
Heathcote, Lady, mother of (por- 

trait) 29 
Heathcote, Lady (portrait) | 23, 29 
Helmingham Park, work at veel ee 
“H.M.S. Victory in the battle of 

Trafalgar ”’ Rett | 
Holmes, Sir, C. J. “15, 61, 91, 92 
Honeymoon 


** House and Growade Mi the face 
Golding Constable, Esq., East 


Bergholt, Suffolk” (engraving).. 63 
Huth Sale, 1895, prices iy eG 
ILL-HEALTH 25, 42, 60, 63, 67, 68, 

70, 71, 76 
Illness, last . 86, 87 
Impressionist go 
Ipswich, visit to, 9; - sketches lost, 9 
JONES, GEORGE 73 
KEPPEL STREET, I .. +e 36, 41 


INDEX 


PAGE 
LAKE CouNnTRY, visit to 19 
** Landscape ” II 
“* Landscape : Boys Bathing ” 25 
“Landscape: Breaking ae of a 
Shower ” ; 36 
** Landscape : Morning ” 25 
*‘ Landscape : Noon” 38 
** Landscape : Sunset ” 75 


Landscapes, 25, 57, 68; contem- 
porary, criticized, 10 

Lavenham, school at “- I 

Lecture, first public, 75; notes of, 
75; point of, 75, 76 

Leeds Art Gallery, exhibition at. 

Left arm affected .. : 

Leicester, Sir John.. 

Leicestershire, visit to : 

Leslie, C. R., criticism by, 5, 9, 10, 
15, 19, 31, 36, 49, 59, 71, 72, 773 
92; last meeting with, 86; Varley 
incident related, 69 

Bétters,.2, 5; 6; 10; II, 12, 13, 14, 
weet ee2.23, 24, 25, 29, 30, 33; 
34, 38, 42, 51, 53, 58, 63, 70, 73, 
74, 77 85; 93 

Lille, award at, 52; exhibit at, 51, 


52 
Linnell, sky repainted by .. 
Linton, Sir James D., estimate by 
London, first visit to, 4; residence 
in; §, 9, 10 
* Lord Mayor’s Show ” 
Love affair, 21, 22, 23, 25, 29, 30, 


31, 32, 33, 34, 35 
Lucas, David . . 37, 52, 61, 63, 72,74, 86 


30 
ae 


72 


Manners, Lady Louisa 23 
Marine drawings Spy sr 
Marriage, contemplated, Bo 31; 
solemnized, 35 
Married life, 36, AI, 42, 48, 49, 51, 
53, 57, 58, 59 
Masterpiece, first real 31 
Medical attendant . 76 
“Memoirs of the ‘Life ‘of John 
Constable,” Leslie’s Rat 
Memoranda, famous passage in .. 72 
Method xe 43,47 


O7 


PAGE 

Natural History of the skies 3 
Natural painter, a .. 13, 50, 89 
Nature, longing for, 10; master of, 

57 
Nayland Church, picture in 15, 19 
Newbury, drawings of .. ieee fle 
** Nollekens, Life of ” os <e 5 
OIL-SKETCHES 89 
Old Sarum, engraving of . 63 
Osmington, honeymoon at 35 
Oxfordshire, visit to 39 
PAINTING, early talent for . ae 2 
Parentage a I 
Paris, award at, 48; . exhibits at, 39, 

47, 48 
Penmanship, early .. 2,4 
Period, best 60 
Petworth, visit to .. Es iyi 
Bs Ploughing Scene in Suffolk” .. 30 
Politics SRE Tele 
Portraits 23, ‘24, 25, 29, 57 
Pre-eminence, reason for .. : 93 
Prices 37) 47 48, 57 
Profession of faith . eee 
Prussia, King of, in London 31 
Purton, William .. oe 68, 76 
RAPHAEL’S CARTOONS, copies of .. 4 
Rathbone Place, 50, residence at 10 
Reading, drawings of : 40 
Rebow, General, 24; commission 

from, 34 
Redhill, engraving of ee Os 
Reform Bill, the, politicians and 70 
Religious nature. : LEAts 
Reynolds, Sir Joshua LEBER GE oie 
Reynolds, S. W. te Ly 
Rheumatism, acute attack of 70, 71 
Rhudde, Rev. DP 21, 225029729; 

eee legacy from, 35 
Rousseau 48, QI 


Royal Academy, associate ‘of, Q7° 
exhibits at, 11, 13, 20, 25, 30, 31, 
33, 36, 37) 38) 39» 40> 49» 53> 585 
68, 71, 75, 76, 78, 79; mem- 
bership of, 59; picture rejected, 
68; student at, 9, 10, II 


INDEX © 


PAGE 
Royal Institution, lectures at, 81; 
notes of, 81, 8 
Ruskin, John, criticism by yoga ts) 
Ruysdael, Jacob .. a BRN hy be 


SALISBURY, 23, 40; Bishop of, 12, 


23, 40 
“Salisbury Cathedral from the 
Bishop’s Garden,” 40, 41 
** Salisbury Cathedral from the 
Meadows,” 68 
“Salisbury from the Meadows ” 77 
*“ Scene on a Navigable River” .. 36 
% Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed- 
nego’ ’ (Jones) sy . Pi bees fe 
“* Showery Noon ” 75 
Sketches, 2, 5, 9, 10, 14, 19, 39, 40, 
49, 71, 77; importance of, 89 
Sky, original, restored .. 30 
Smith, John Thomas, 5; etchings by, 
OR letters to, 5,9 
Smith, S. Cc. 1s observations by 90, 91 


a Spring ” : Se Ps: 

** Stoke Poges Church, the scene of 
Gray’s ‘Elegy’’ a RR je 

Stothard, criticism by ae aed ag 


“ Stratford Mill ” 3713 
Stream bordered with Willows ” 67 
** Studies from Nature” .. Ae ee 
Suffolk, inalienable affection for 4t; 
landscapes of (engravings), 63 


“ "THAMES AT 'TWICKENHAM ” (Wil- 


son) ; “s enn 
“The Annunciation” .. ay" 4 
“ The Bridge ” 47 


“The Cenotaph,” "75, 79, ‘Bo, 81, 

88; Wordsworth’s lines on, 79, 80 
“The Chemist ” A 5 
“The Cornfield ” 53, 57; ‘locality 

of, 57 
“The Hay-wain ” 38, 39, 42, 47, 48 
‘The Leaping Horse,” 49, 50, 52, 

89; six-foot sketch of, 49, 50 


“The Lock ” 49 
“The Marine Parade and Chain 

Pier at Brighton ” ays SORES 
“The Massacre of Scio ”’ shin ee 


PAGE 
“The Mound of the City of Old 
Sarum” ., ys ay 77, 81 
“The Opening of Waterloo 
Bridge,” 52, 53, 71, 72; engraving 
forbidden, 72 ; time taken to paint, 
72; Turner and, 72, 73 
* The Valley Farm” >. (4 ieagpeeneo 
‘* The White Horse” 
“The Young Waltonians ” Brat: | 
Tinney, Mr. te 
Tompkins, Mr. Herbert .. en bee 
Tory, stanch old .. oe Be ty). 
Touch Me : gI 
Turner ; e 19, 58, 72, 73» 92 
“Trees near Hampstead Church” 88 


UNPOPULARITY 67, 70, 71, 72 
VARLEY, the Astrologer, incident of 69 
Vaughan, Mr. Henry Se fb Nha 
Vernon, Mr. Robert fe 78 
Victoria and Albert Museum, cols 
lection, 9, 19, 30, 31, 49, 67, 71, 88 
Victory, HMS.., sketches of AF | 
* View near Oxford ” (Wilson) .. 93 


** View of Salisbury ” a ees 
** View of Willy Lott’s House” .. 78 
Vocation, choice of a oh Be 2 


“¢ WATER MEADOWS NEAR SALIS- 

BURY ” 67 
Watts, David Pike, 19; portrait of, 

23 
West, Mr. Benjamin Sy II, 12 
Westmorland, sketches made in .. 19 
Weymouth Bay, engravingof .. 63 
William IV, coronation of, . nog 


* Willy Lott’s House” 30, 39 
Wilson, Richard, 4, 9, 20, a 60, +3 94 
Wind-miller ; 2 
“Windermere Lake” sae 
*“€ Wivenhoe Park ” ~ Pte 
Worcester, lectures at oe ore 
Wordsworth, lines by 79, 80 
* YARMOUTH ” Cs Rt 
Yarmouth, engraving OF ts A cs 
“ Yarmouth Pier ” we Bree 


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